Midnight in Europe is the 13th literary fiction book in the Night Soldiers series by author Alan Furst.
Paris, 1938: As the shadow of war enveloped Europe, democratic forces on the Continent struggled against fascism and communism, while in Spain the war began.

Cristián Ferrar, a talented and handsome Spanish émigré, is a lawyer in the Paris office of a prestigious international law firm. Ferrar is approached by the embassy of the Republic of Spain and asked to help a secret agency that is trying to supply weapons to the besieged Republic’s army – an effort that puts his life in jeopardy. in the war against fascism.

Joining Ferrar on this mission is a group of men and women like no other. Idealists and gangsters, arms dealers, aristocrats and spies. Shady nightclubs in Paris to white shoe law firms in New York, from brothels in Istanbul to docks in Poland, Ferrar and his allies battle the secret agents of Hitler and Franco . What allies are they: There’s Max de Lyon, a former arms merchant now hunted by the Gestapo; Marquesa Maria Cristina, a beautiful nobleman who likes danger; and Macedonian Stavros, who grew up “fighting with Bulgarian bandits. After that, being a gangster was easy.” Then there was Eileen Moore, the American woman Ferrar could never forget.

Alan Furst paints a mesmerizing portrait of a continent entering a nightmare – and the heroes and heroines that have fought against the darkness.

The novel begins very well with the story of Castillo which Furst relates with the mastery of a writer at the top of his game. The novel moves on to the story of Cristian Ferrar who is with an American law firm which has an office in Paris and Furst is very good in giving us the feel of the tension developing in Europe as the new Third Reich starts to flex its powerful muscles and looks for military victories beyond the German borders. Furst introduces a character whose name is de Lyon whose aim is to help the Spanish Republican government from being collapsing under the military blows to its existence from Franco and his allies. Ferrar is persuaded by de Lyon to assist in the purchase of weapons.de Lyon has contacts as an arms dealer with the criminal underworld and Furst tries to contrast the clients that Ferrar has dealings with,who represent upper -class society in European society in the 1930s.

So Furst narrates evenings that Ferrar spends in high-class restaurants dining on good food and wine.with the encounters in places such as a Turkish brothel in which Ferrar and de Lyon encounter the international gangsters. The problem is that Furst tries to carry the reader along through the feel of the Polish countryside in search of the missing weapons and I lost interest in de Lyon and the weapons and wanted to know more about the women in Ferrar’s life and when he comes back into contact in New York with the love of his life Furst brings the narrative to an end .

• Midnight in Europe

• By: Alan Furst

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