All Intensive Purposes

As I suggested at the time, I was a little disappointed by the last Alan Furst novel I read, but I loved Dark Voyage -- I didn't want to put it down. This time, Furst's protaganist is one DeHaan, the Dutch captain of a tramp steamer calling at Tangier in 1940. As you'll know from the maps at the start of the book, DeHaan finds himself in the Baltic before the curtains close. The only problem I had with Dark Voyage was knowing I would have to wait a while for the next one -- I buy them in paperback, and the next isn't out in hardcover yet, alas.

Alan Furst's website, with reviews and other fun stuff, is here. If you like reading about Tangier and the coast of Africa in Dark Voyage, I recommend Desert War: The North Africa Campaign 1940-43, a journalist's account of the fighting in the Near East. What it lacks in perspective it more than makes up in immediacy, with occasional glimpses of what Cyrenaica, the Sudan and Iraq -- inter alia -- were like before the war, a world long past. Oddly enough, if you type "http://www.alanfurst.com" into your browser's address bar, you'll find yourself at a web page for Visiting Angels Living Assistance Services, homecare services for seniors.