Night Soldiers

I am a junkie for Furst’s cycle of spy stories set in Europe before and during WWII, of which this is the debut. The action winds and wheels from a Balkan village to occupied Paris; our hero/anti-hero is a disenchanted NKVD recruit. Furst’s plots are meticulous, but the real genius is the evocation of period, and characters one can believe in, even care about.