Mission to Paris by Alan Furst

Published by Random House on June 12, 2012; released as a trade paperback on June 4, 2013

Jack Warner of Warner Brothers sends Fredric Stahl, an Austrian-born American actor, to Paris, where he will star in a French-made movie. The timing is unfortunate for Stahl. It's 1938 and Germany is engaged in political warfare, using a variety of resources to persuade the French that it would be futile to resist Hitler. Stahl, who has no love of swastikas, would prefer to avoid discussions of politics, but Germany wants to use him as an instrument of propaganda while America wants to use him ... not as a spy, exactly, but as a source of information. About halfway into the novel, Stahl's role changes.

Whether he's describing the contents of a cruise ship newsletter or the streets of Paris, Alan Furst's attention to detail is impressive. Stahl makes brief trips to Germany, Morocco, Hungary, and Romania, but it is Paris that comes alive. The characters are well-rounded, and if not exactly memorable, they all seem real.

Mission to Paris didn't hold me in the clutches of suspense as do Furst's best books, but it is a solid, entertaining novel. A love story that starts as a subplot but eventually takes center stage is more credible than most spy novel love stories. The novel's weakness is that Stahl never seems to be in real danger. Action scenes are subdued. Stahl's ability to waltz to a happy ending, untouched by the intrigue that surrounds him, makes the story less than gripping. Still, the intricacies of political warfare are fascinating, and Mission to Paris never failed to hold my interest.

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