![]() ![]() ![]() And throughout, the story is laced with historical detail, irony and thumbnail bios of various figures of the period. The action unfolds not in the 1950s and ‘60s, but in the 1930s and ‘40s when the conventional two-sided struggle between East and West is complicated by the machinations of the Nazi state. ![]() Thus we begin not in Berlin or London, but on the banks of the Bulgarian Danube. ![]() In “Night Soldiers,” Alan Furst, much to his credit, tries to stretch the conventions of time, place and conflict that now dominate the genre. It is a tight, exacting genre that seems to work best within the confines of at least partially familiar terrains. Having accepted, anticipated and enjoyed this frustration, the reader can then be satiated by the artful confluence of lesser and apparently diverse subplots. This is not simply because there is ready material at hand, but because the genre operates best under the umbrella of historical stalemates: The intractability of a conflict at once imparts to the reader a desire for its resolution and allows him or her the pleasure of having that desire frustrated by Byzantine circumstance. The contemporary espionage novel has by and large drawn its intrigues, its moles, and its endgames from either the Cold War or the Middle East. ![]()
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