Spies of the Balkans: A Novel by Alan Furst. New York. 2010. Random House. hardcover. 268 pages. Jacket design by Robbin Schiff. 9781400066032.

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

   Greece, 1940. In the port city of Salonika, with its wharves and brothels, dark alleys and Turkish mansions, a tense political drama is being played out. As Adolf Hitler plans to invade the Balkans, spies begin to circle--and Costa Zannis, a senior police official, must deal with them all. He is soon in the game, working to secure an escape route for fugitives from Nazi Berlin that is protected by German lawyers, Balkan detectives, and Hungarian gangsters--and hunted by the Gestapo. Meanwhile, as war threatens, the erotic life of the city grows passionate. For Zannis, that means a British expatriate who owns the local ballet academy, a woman from the dark side of Salonika society, and the wife of a shipping magnate. With extraordinary historical detail and a superb cast of characters, Spies of the Balkans is a stunning novel about a man who risks everything to fight back against the world's evil. 

Alan Furst (born February 20, 1941) is an American author of historical spy novels. Furst has been called 'an heir to the tradition of Eric Ambler and Graham Greene,' whom he cites along with Joseph Roth and Arthur Koestler as important influences. Most of his novels since 1988 have been set just prior to or during the Second World War and he is noted for his successful evocations of Eastern Europe peoples and places during the period from 1933 to 1944.

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