Dark Voyage

The fourteen Night Soldiers novels Alan Furst has written to date involve spies in Europe in the years leading up to and during World War II. They all take place on dry landwith one exception. In Dark Voyage, Furst takes us to sea on an old Dutch freighter pressed into service in the British war effort. On this clandestine journey, we follow Captain Eric DeHaan of the Noordendam through the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the Baltic Seas. The action takes place during the months of April, May, and June 1941, climaxing on June 22nd, when Hitler invaded the USSR.

On a freighter in World War II

Eric DeHaan had always wanted to join the Royal Dutch Navy. Captaining a tramp freighter was a poor substitute. But he gets his wish when the owner of the Netherlands Hyperion Line consents to help the British. DeHaan is commissioned as a lieutenant commander in the Dutch navy but effectively placed under the command of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. On behalf of the British, he undertakes a series of secret missions that take him and his motley crew from one port after another throughout the European and North African theaters of the war.

A familiar Night Soldiers character

Meanwhile, one of the familiar characters in the Night Soldiers series is embarked on a dangerous journey of his own. He’s a British spy of indeterminate Central European heritage who goes by the name S. Kolb. Masquerading as a Swiss businessman, Kolb travels from one city to another across Europe, never far from capture by Nazi agents. He’s a spy and an occasional assassin. And his path will eventually cross DeHaan’s.

In Dark Voyage, Alan Furst excels in conjuring up the sights, sounds, and smells of Europe during the early years of World War II. This is more than an exciting story about a freighter in World War II. Furst’s research into the history of the period is thorough. The novel is particularly effective in casting light on the sometimes fraught relationships between Britain and its Continental allies and on the logistics of the Nazis’s undersea war on Allied shipping.

In a favorable (and informative) review in the Los Angeles Times (September 4, 2004), Eugen Weber ably summarizes the plot. He concludes writing “Furst ensnares his readers. As usual.”

WARNING: MILD SPOILERS

In “Dark Voyage”, Alan Furst returns with another installment of his (very) loosely-connected tales of World War II intrique. This time, it is 1941, and Eric DeHaan, captain of the Dutch freighter Noordendam, finds himself, his crew and his ship drafted into the service of Allied naval intelligence. Tasked with delivering secret cargoes that includce commandoes, radio equipment, and even an assassin, to dangerous ports of call, the Noordendam has only fresh paint and a false flag to protect her.

Where many of the more recent entries in Furst’s “Night Soldiers” series focus on smaller efforts on the part of individuals who are often little more than desperate civilians, “Dark Voyage” takes us into combat with men who are already adventurers of a sort. This would seem to be the formula for a gripping read, but where the author’s strengths remain – terse descriptions, scrupulous historical detail and elliptical character development that slowly immerses the reader in the lives of the protagonists – this novel never fully delivers. There are scenes of battle that just sort of end, and DeHaan’s next mission is introduced without much detail about how the perilous situation in which his ship found itself resolved.

Likewise, there are too many moments of deus ex machina – happy coincidences that keep the story moving without the author having to work too hard to make it so. (In one scene, DeHaan is about to be mugged, or worse, but is saved by some sailors with whom he drank in a tavern. In another, he takes his ship into Soviet-occupied Latvia as a port of last resort – something that would have dire consequences for some of his crew and passengers, given the alliance between Hitler and Stalin – only for the day of the Noordendam’s arrival to coincide with Germany’s ill-fated decision to turn on the USSR, thereby converting Russia from an enemy to an ally overnight.

Although there are things to like, “Dark Voyage” seems disengaged and a bit formulaic. It is not a bad book, but it is far short of Furst’s best work.

It took a while to get into it because the the main characters are the captain and the ship. Other people are sketchily drawn. So it is unusual and I like the writing style and it has a terrific ending. I don’t know what the other books are like but I may well give Furst another look

This is the tenth Alan Furst book I have read and even though I have enjoyed all his books, I rate this as one of his best. It is a ‘ripping yarn,’ which carries you away with concern about the main characters, the ship, as well as how the very convincing and original war story will end. I stayed up until very late one night, as I had to know the outcome and it was well worth it. Onto his next book.

Furst doesn’t write thrillers in the conventional use of the term. He writes stories about people coping wih living in extraordinary circumstances — no plans or grand schemes just the buffetings of Fate which require making constant adjustments and compromises. So the stories, like episodes in life, sometimes have a distinct beginning and an end but often just peter out without any fixed resolution. Either you like that or perhaps you find his books unsatisfying since you might think the stories get nowhere. I like it.
Dark Voyage is a novel in this mould with a strong narrative but a wandering story. It has echoes of Greene and Conrad as another reviewer has suggested and a similarly poignant ending like many of Greene’s stories.
And like many of Greene’s “entertainments” it is to be viewed on its merits — it does not set out to self-importantly weigh the human condition. It does seek to entertain — and it succeeds in doing that very well. Intelligent writing that does not stoop to sensation or artifices of plot to achieve its effect .

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