Desperate times, desperate measures
It’s spring of 1941 and Britain stands alone against Hitler’s Germany. The British aircraft dropping their bombs on German military and manufacturing bases, and cities, were having an effect on that nation’s morale and production, but every downed British aircraft meant fewer experienced airmen.
A good number of these crews survived, parachuting into different European countries when their planes ran out of fuel or were shot out of the air. Some were taken prisoner and sent to camps; others eluded capture. Either way, the loss of these aviators was damaging Britain’s war effort.
In Alan Furst’s thriller, “A Hero of France” (Random House, 2017, 256 pages), we enter into the French underground that rescued these pilots and their crew members, hid them from the Nazi occupiers, and attempted to smuggle them back to Britain and into action. Mathieu — a false name — is one of the leaders of the Resistance, head of a cell in Paris devoted to saving the airmen and if possible, delivering them safely into neutral countries like Spain.
As we follow Mathieu’s rescue efforts, we meet his accomplices. Max de Lyon, who among other things was an arms dealer before the war, now operates a risqué night club frequented by German soldiers and bureaucrats. Lisette, at 17 the youngest member of Mathieu’s group, acts as a courier, riding her bicycle around Paris after school and delivering messages about possible threats and upcoming operations. Chantal is the beautiful sophisticate who frequently poses as Mathieu’s wife or companion when they’re on a mission, while Joëlle, who comes late to this game of intrigue, is Mathieu’s good friend and lover. Others involved in stymying the Nazis include a café owner, a young Jewish teacher seeking revenge for the atrocities committed by the Nazis against his people, and several more who, while never becoming formal members of Mathieu’s group, are willing to lend a hand — the loan of a van, for instance, or providing a safe house.
As the authorities close in on Mathieu’s operation, the tension in “A Hero of France” ratchets up. Otto Broehm, a senior police inspector working with the Wehrmacht’s military police, recruits a criminal refuge imprisoned in France, Stefan Kusar, to become a mole in Mathieu’s cell. Though Mathieu has doubts about taking Kusar into the Resistance, he finally puts them aside. It’s then that the trouble begins.
Earlier in the story, during his interview with Broehm, Kusar makes an admission that reveals his true character. Broehm explains to Kusar, “Of course, it will be dangerous, you will have to be patient, and cunning, you will have to understand the people you are dealing with, you will have to say the right things, you will have to be an actor, a good actor.”
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“Nothing new, Major, I have been a good actor all my life. And I have studied people, their behavior, their desires, their weaknesses, with me it’s a kind of talent. I don’t like to be fooled.”
“People will be arrested, you know, as a result of your work.”
Kusar shrugged. “They gambled, they lost, life goes on.”
Though many of the characters in “A Hero of France” lack Kusar’s cynicism and try to avoid cooperating with the Nazis, they are also either afraid or too self-absorbed in protecting themselves to oppose their conquerors. By including such timid men and women in his story, Furst is merely reflecting historical truth, for despite impressions today, only about three percent of the French belonged to the Resistance.
In many other ways as well, Furst brings alive the occupation and the city of Paris through the use of facts and details, so much so that about halfway through “A Hero of France,” I paused in wonder at the amount of research that he must have conducted to put together such a story. The clothing and fashion worn by Parisians and others, the descriptions and names of the streets, buildings, metro stops, and parks of Paris, the customs and etiquette of the times, the limited foods available during wartime rationing, the operations of the black market: Furst not only had to play archaeologist and dig these pieces out of the past from histories, newspapers, and documents, but he then had to blend this information in a natural fashion into his writing.
In “The Art of Fiction,” novelist John Gardner stressed the importance of inducing in a reader a “dream-like” state, which “creates a vivid and continuous dream in the reader’s mind.” Like other fine writers, this fictive hypnosis of the reader is precisely what Alan Furst accomplishes. As we sink into the book, we find ourselves living in Paris 80-odd years ago.
If you decide to give Furst’s novel a try and find it a pleasure, here’s some good news. “A Hero of France” is only one of 15 such stories in his “Night Soldier” series, all of which take place in the European underground during World War II.
(Jeff Minick reviews books and has written four of his own: two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust On Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning As I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.”)
