Spies of the Balkans, by Alan Furst, $26
The morning after Mussolini’s troops invaded Greece on Oct. 28, 1940, there was no khaki yarn to be had in any of the shops; all of it had been bought by women to knit warm clothes for their men fighting in the cold mountains. It’s this kind of subtle detail that brings Alan Furst’s new World War II thriller so much to life for the reader.
Like its predecessors, it’s the story of one man with a deep hatred of fascism. This time, it’s a highly principled Salonika policeman, Costa Zannis, who launches his own war against the Nazis by doing a friend a favor and helping smuggle a few Jews out of Germany. This soon turns into a full-fledged rescue operation in which Costa, now a lieutenant in the Greek army, is aided by his opposite number in Yugoslavia, another policeman turned army officer named Pavlic.
Costa’s activities catch the attention of British intelligence, which needs someone like him to get an important scientist out of occupied Paris. The Balkans are swarming with spies of all nationalities, and Costa must navigate dangerous waters indeed to carry out his missions.
In the best tradition of spy fiction, beautiful women also abound, and Costa romances no fewer than three of them. But the real success of the book lies in its small details and in Costa’s underlying humanity, a shining beacon in a world engulfed by darkness.
The Pull of the Moon, by Diane Janes, $25
Kate Mayfield is a woman past middle age, an early retiree from teaching who fills her days with swimming, book clubs and language lessons, all meaningless activities chosen to keep her from dwelling on a terrifying secret from her past.
As a feckless college student in 1973, she lived for a summer with her charismatic boyfriend Danny and his friend Simon in a Herefordshire house owned by Simon’s uncle, where the boys were supposed to renovate a garden and install a pond. They were joined by Trudie, a free-spirited runaway whose presence plays havoc with the already uneasy balance among the three young people.
The situation is further complicated when Kate learns to her dismay that Danny has told his parents that the two of them are getting married. What began as a daring romantic adventure turns gradually into a nightmare culminating in murder and suicide.
The story is framed by a plea from Danny’s mother, now an old woman on her deathbed, to learn what really happened to her son, and as Kate reluctantly prepares to visit her, events from the past are neatly unfolded for the reader.
There are more than a few plot twists, all skillfully foreshadowed but never predictable, in this compelling debut novel where nothing is exactly what it seems to be.
An Ordinary Decent Criminal, by Michael Van Rooy, $24.99.
Montgomery Haaviko is what the guards in London’s Wormwood Scrubs Prison call “an ordinary decent criminal.” It’s a way of differentiating the burglars and smugglers from pedophiles or terrorists. Only there’s very little about Haaviko that is ordinary.
A reformed career criminal, he knows every trick of the trade: from how to conceal your fingerprints with a spot of Crazy Glue to the best way to survive a brutal police interrogation (scream a lot; it makes the cops feel better to know you appreciate their work).
Haaviko has spent eight of the past 10 years in prison but now he’s got a wife and small child and a house in Winnipeg. His dreams of a normal life are shattered, however, when three robbers make the mistake of their short lives by breaking into his house in the middle of the night.
It takes him less than a minute to kill all three. But when the cops arrive, they whisk Haaviko off to jail where Detective Sgt. Enzio Walsh is determined to send him back to prison permanently. Prison might be safer than life on the outside. A local crime boss, the uncle of one of the robbers, is out for revenge.
One of the aliases Haaviko uses is Parker, the name of Richard Stark’s criminal anti-hero in a long-running series to which Van Rooy’s debut novel is likely to be compared, and justifiably so. As in the Stark novels, its often brutal scenes are all the more chilling for the matter-of-fact manner in which Haaviko accepts each deadly situation.
It’s also a bit of a how-to-be-a-criminal manual, as Haaviko explains the ins and outs of the criminal trade, presumably tips the author picked up during a three-year stretch in a Manitoba prison in the early 1990s.
Van Rooy says he was innocent. We’re going to take some convincing.
Tom and Enid Schantz are freelancers who write regularly about new mysteries.
