As one character says bitterly, “Europe is a nice neighborhood with a mad dog. Franco, of course, was receiving massive military assistance from Germany and Italy, while the United States and Britain refused to help Spain’s elected government. “ Midnight In Europe,” Furst’s 13th historical spy novel, is set largely in Paris in 1938 as various partisans struggle to provide arms to the Spanish Republicans, who are near defeat by Gen. Great armies clash in the background of his novels, but his focus is on the espionage wars between Hitler’s minions and those from many countries who risk it all to oppose them. The American novelist Alan Furst, whose talent equals his ambition, set out in 1988 to portray the conflict between fascism and democratic forces across Europe before and during World War II. Good writers sometimes stake out one corner of the world and cultivate it for most or all of their careers: Flannery O’Connor’s rural Georgia, John Cheever’s Eastern suburbia and Michael Connelly’s Los Angeles are examples.
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