It is the late summer of 1938, Europe is about to explode,
the Hollywood film star Fredric Stahl is on his way to Paris
to make a movie for Paramount France. The Nazis know he’s
coming—a secret bureau within the Reich Foreign Ministry has
for years been waging political warfare against France,
using bribery, intimidation, and corrupt newspapers to
weaken French morale and degrade France’s will to defend
herself.
For their purposes, Fredric Stahl is a perfect agent of
influence, and they attack him. What they don’t know is that
Stahl, horrified by the Nazi war on Jews and intellectuals,
has become part of an informal spy service being run out of
the American embassy in Paris.
From Alan Furst, the bestselling author, often praised as
the best spy novelist ever, comes a novel that’s truly hard
to put down. Mission to Paris includes beautifully drawn
scenes of romance and intimacy, and the novel is alive with
extraordinary characters: the German Baroness von Reschke, a
famous hostess deeply involved in Nazi clandestine
operations; the assassins Herbert and Lothar; the Russian
film actress and spy Olga Orlova; the Hungarian diplomat and
spy, Count Janos Polanyi; along with the French cast of
Stahl’s movie, German film producers, and the magnetic women
in Stahl’s life, the socialite Kiki de Saint-Ange and the
émigré Renate Steiner.
But always at the center of the novel is the city of Paris,
the heart and soul of Europe—its alleys and bistros, hotels
grand and anonymous, and the Parisians, living every night
as though it was their last. As always, Alan Furst brings to
life both a dark time in history and the passion of the
human hearts that fought to survive it.
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