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A Hero of France: Book summary and reviews of A Hero of France by Alan Furst

A Hero of France

by Alan Furst

A Hero of France by Alan Furst X
A Hero of France by Alan Furst
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  • Published May 2016
    256 pages
    Genre: Historical Fiction

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Book Summary

From the bestselling master espionage writer, hailed by Vince Flynn as "the best in the business," comes a riveting novel about the French Resistance in Nazi-occupied Paris.

1941. The City of Light is dark and silent at night. But in Paris and in the farmhouses, barns, and churches of the French countryside, small groups of ordinary men and women are determined to take down the occupying forces of Adolf Hitler. Mathieu, a leader of the French Resistance, leads one such cell, helping downed British airmen escape back to England.

Alan Furst's suspenseful, fast-paced thriller captures this dangerous time as no one ever has before. He brings Paris and occupied France to life, along with courageous citizens who outmaneuver collaborators, informers, blackmailers, and spies, risking everything to fulfill perilous clandestine missions. Aiding Mathieu as part of his covert network are Lisette, a seventeen-year-old student and courier; Max de Lyon, an arms dealer turned nightclub owner; Chantal, a woman of class and confidence; Daniel, a Jewish teacher fueled by revenge; Joëlle, who falls in love with Mathieu; and Annemarie, a willful aristocrat with deep roots in France, and a desire to act.

As the German military police heighten surveillance, Mathieu and his team face a new threat, dispatched by the Reich to destroy them all.

Shot through with the author's trademark fine writing, breathtaking suspense, and intense scenes of seduction and passion, Alan Furst's A Hero of France is at once one of the finest novels written about the French Resistance and the most gripping novel yet by the living master of the spy thriller.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. This daydream of life under the Occupation is something rare: a suspense novel that offers the pleasures of relaxation." - Kirkus

"Starred Review.This deliriously atmospheric novel reads with the sharp clarity of a poem, or perhaps a Piaf song, romantic and deeply melancholic but soaked in danger." - Booklist

"Starred Review. A master of the historical spy novel, Furst scores again with his 14th suspense story (after Midnight in Europe)." - Publishers Weekly

This information about A Hero of France was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Alan Furst Author Biography

© Shonna Valeska

Alan Furst, widely recognized as the master of the historical spy novel, is the author of A Hero of France, Midnight in Europe, Mission to Paris, and many other bestsellers. Born in New York, he lived for many years in Paris, and now lives on Long Island.

Link to Alan Furst's Website

Other books by Alan Furst at BookBrowse
  • The Foreign Correspondent jacket
  • Mission to Paris jacket

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