Blood of Victory

Starred review from July 1, 2002
Critics who thought Furst's previous novel Kingdom of Shadows
lacked a clearly linear plot will find much to praise him for in his toothsome new historical espionage thriller. The novel (named for the Romanian oil vital to the German war machine) describes a daring operation to disrupt the flow of that oil from the Ploesti fields in Romania to Germany by sinking a group of barges at a shallow point in the Danube in early 1941. The motley group attempting this maneuver barely holds together: its members include a sultry French aristocrat, hounded Russian Jews, even Serbian thugs. And while the tale features the same period details as its predecessor, and stretches from Istanbul to Bucharest with detours in Paris and London, it reaffirms the signature Slavic focus of the author's earlier books like Dark Star. This is literally personified in the novel's protagonist, the dogged Russian émigré I.A. Serebin, who has to dodge every kind of secret police from the Gestapo to Stalin's NKVD (" 'Why, Serge?' 'Why not?' That was, Serebin thought, glib and ingenuous, but until a better two-word history of the USSR came along, it would do"). Diehard Furst fans will appreciate the recurrence of several secondary characters from Kingdom of Shadows
(especially a certain heavyset Hungarian spymaster). But even newcomers will be ensnared by Furst's delicious recreations of a world sliding headlong into oblivion (wonderfully illustrated by Serebin having to drive a car off a cliff to escape with his life at the climax). Maps. Agent, Amanda Urban. (Sept. 3)Forecast:In a full-on campaign to make Furst a household name, Random House is reissuing his six earlier novels in trade paperback. Four are already out, and the last two (Dark Star and
Night Soldiers) will be released at the same time as
Blood of Victory. This, plus the attention Furst got for
Kingdom of Shadows, could easily propel
Blood of Victory onto bestseller lists. 5-city author tour.

August 12, 2002
In his latest thriller, Furst repeats the success of works like Kingdom of Shadows, plumbing the same territory Europe, particularly France and Eastern Europe, in the tense era surrounding World War II with the same stylish and elliptical writing. Newly arrived in Istanbul to serve as executive secretary of the International Russian Union, Russian migr journalist I.A. Serebin finds himself yanked into action by the British secret service, which is intent on stopping the shipment of Romanian oil to Germany. His contact proves to be the charming Marie-Galante, whom he has just bedded on the freighter that has brought him to his new home. As so Serebin weaves among Paris, Istanbul, and Bucharest in a desperate attempt to arrange a way to divert a barge load of the precious fuel the title's "blood of victory." Most of the time, Serebin is in the dark, and so is the reader a stylistic impulse that mimics the experience of World War II but can create some frustration and a sense of distance from the text. Nevertheless, Furst's spy work is some of the best around, and this is an important addition to most public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/02.] Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"

Copyright 2002 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 1, 2002
(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)