Red Gold

It’s hard to give a mediocre review to an Alan Furst book; his first 3 books were 5+ stars, off-the-charts great reading. But somewhere along the line, he seems to have gotten a little fatigued. His 4th book was a shorter volume, told in a bit of a different style, and just didn’t hold my attention as well as the first 3 books. Not to mention, I hated the ending of the 4th book. To my great surprise, the story of the 4th book continued in the 5th book: the same characters, picked up right where the 4th book ended. Why would Furst do this? It bears a very strong resemblance to the practice of many movie producers, who take a popular book and turn it into TWO movies, a Part 1 and Part 2, solely to maximize profits. While I have no idea if this is what Furst’s intentions were, I do know that the 4th book was 324 pages and this book was a scant 272 pages. His first book, the fantastic Night Soldiers, was 516 pages of riveting reading. Couldn’t he have combined books 4 and 5 for a single, epic 596 page volume? I wish he had.
One star deduction for this.

As for the writing itself, this book had the feel of a screenplay to me. Instead of sticking with the main character for an entire chapter, Furst decided to switch scenes abruptly many times within a chapter. And there frequently was no pause between scenes, no double space or line of asterisks, nothing. You finished one paragraph with one character in a specific place, and the next paragraph is describing a different character in a different place. I had to read halfway into the paragraph before I realized it was a different scene. This never happened in the first three books, and to be honest, I don’t like this style. Also making it feel like a screenplay was the frequency of the main character “almost” getting caught by the Gestapo, the French Police, or a rival faction. It felt like I was watching a TV show and the character is in jeopardy, so we go to commercial. Then, after the commercial, it turns out that it was a false alarm, or he talks his way out of it, or escapes in some other way. Just too many of those scenes, placed at appropriate intervals. Another star deducted for this. Oh, and finally: I hated the ending of this book as much as the 4th book.

I hope that Furst went back to the style from the first 3 books after this, but I’ll have to read book 6 and find out….

If you love well-written historical thrillers, Red Gold will be a perfect choice for you. Its a bit noir, brooding, dark and haunting – just like Occupied Paris itself, in which the action takes place. Casson himself – a former film producer on the run – is grim and forlorn, hiding from the Gestapo under a false name and seeing no future for himself in this new France, swarming with uniformed men. But one day, and quite by accident, Casson gets involved with the Resistance, and his life changes drastically, changing him in turn: from the desperate man in hiding into someone with a goal, someone who doesnt mind risking his life for what is right.
I absolutely loved the setting of this novel, which was so detailed, so authentic that I could almost breathe the air of Occupied France, see the people walking its streets, taste the food they shared in clandestine cafes. The research is absolutely outstanding, and characters are wonderfully real. Casson himself is not your typical hero who comes unscathed out of every situation and saves the world in the end; hes an ordinary man with very ordinary motives and emotions, and thats what makes him so damn likable and easy to identify with. I also love Fursts writing style with his short, snappy sentences – always precise and to the point. An absolutely wonderful historical fiction novel! I wish I could give it more than five stars!

Alan Furst homes in on the French Resistance in Red Gold, the fifth of the 13 novels in his Night Soldiers series that have been appearing regularly since 1988. His mastery of the moods and the political environment in Europe before and during the Second World War is unexcelled, and the flawed, believable characters he writes about cause him to be regularly compared to Graham Greene and Eric Ambler, who were regarded as the masters of spy fiction decades before him.

Red Gold features a former film producer named Jean Casson who finds himself forced to become involved in espionage and sabotage in France early in World War II. In telling the story, Furst spotlights the tension and distrust among the several factions involved in the Resistance, from the loyal army officers on the staff of the puppet Petain to the Gaullist forces headquartered in London and the well-organized Communist underground. Cassons role as liaison among the various factions gives him a unique vantage point on the complex relationships among these contending groups, each of them positioning itself for what was shaping up as a civil war that would follow the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Fursts novels have a formulaic element, in that every one features a reluctant hero Casson fits that bill to a T as well as a love story. However, theres nothing formulaic about either the circumstances or the locales Furst chooses, shifting from Eastern Europe to Spain to France and Greece and back. Even minor characters leap off the page, fully formed. As a guide to the reality of life as it was experienced by Europeans during World War II, theres no one better than Alan Furst.

If youre looking for blockbuster spy fiction in the tradition of Ian Fleming, with superhero agents and larger-than-life master criminals, you wont find Alan Fursts work to be satisfying. However, if you crave realistic stories and credible characters based on thorough historical research, youll find it difficult to put down any of his novels.

Having enjoyed previous books by Alan Furst, I was looking forward to a fascinating read. Instead, I found the book to be tedious and rambling, with no real thread and precious little action or suspense. I gave up a third of the way through as the lack of plot development made me lose the will to read further. I fail to see how this book could have garnered so many 5-star reviews.

I am a fan of Alan Furst’s espionage novels covering the period leading to and during WW2 – and this is another of this series, and a good one too.
In effect, it’s a sequel to “The World at Night”, which also features Jean Casson, in peacetime a film producer. For me, it captures the atmosphere of the time (or, at least, what I imagine the atmosphere to have been; I’m quite glad I didn’t live through it!!). The characters in the story are well and believably drawn, the action maintains tension and you’re kept involved in what is happening.
I enjoyed it, and I look forward to enjoying more from Alan Furst.

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