John Wilson talks about Alan Furst’s latest novel, thirteenth in the series, Midnight in Europe.

“A lot of spy fiction prides itself on a pervasive sense of world-weary disillusionment. Note that, while in one sense self-consciously “anti-romantic,” these books are often quite romantic in their own way. (Are you, Reader, among the few willing to look into the dark heart of things?) By contrast, Furst gives us idealized but not impossibly heroic versions of ordinary people making moral choices. Romantic? Sentimental? OK, sure—as long as you acknowledge that those labels apply equally to John lé Carre.”