How DO you manage to read so many books, I'm asked. I answer two ways:

It's not so hard to read a book a week. Lot's of people manage to do that and more, and some of them still have jobs. And kids.

If my guard is down or I know you really well I might also admit that sometimes I don't finish the book before I start writing about it, especially if it's quite long or it's nonfiction.

I fill in with a think-piece on people being jailed for library fines or the response to new e-book readers. News stories more than once have saved me from having to finish a book or think.

Other times I go away on vacation, far from phones and obligations, and read so many books I wonder how I'll ever fit them into one of these five minute essays on community radio.

That's the situation now. In the past few weeks I've been devouring novels faster than Sara Palin skins a moose. Catching up on my paranoia quotient, I have again been enjoying the historical spy novels of Alan Furst. Also a new one by John Lawton. Also the contemporary spy novels of Stella Rimington.

While away I had time to read The Borgias and their Enemies 1431 - 1519 and go through another book I've had sitting around for a couple of years, on the color red, titled, of course, A Perfect Red. I read How to Travel Incognito by Madeleine author Ludwig Bemelmans, plus a bunch of other things that may or may not make it into one or another Words on Books.

As I've noted here in the past, the excellent novels of Alan Furst (spelled F-U-R-S-T) are set in Europe between the world wars, a troubled time of intrigue and double and triple crosses amongst individuals, spy services, and dictators. Furst's books accomplish the basic goal of any historic novel: they transparently transport the reader into a lost world and make it seem real, without visible effort. To do this, the writer must use all the tricks and tools of writing while himself remaining invisible to the reader.

There is a passage near the end of Dark Star when Pravda journalist and reluctant spy Andre Szara breaks the first rule of spycraft by keeping a private journal.

"It was March, a good writer's month, Szara felt, because writers like abundant weather -- thunder and lightning, wind and rain, surging spring skies -- not particularly caring if it's good or bad just so there's a lot going on... he was surprised at the emotional aches and pains it cost him, but evidently he wanted to do it because he didn't stop."

Then the author allows himself to touch on his own reasons for writing: "...the right thing to do was archaeology: archaeology didn't have to be about the ancient world, he discovered; you could scrape the dirt away and sift the sand of more recent times. The point was to preserve, not to lose what had happened."

In an interview with his publisher, Furst said, "These are characters in novels, but people like them existed; people like them were courageous people with ordinary lives and, when the moment came, they acted with bravery and determination. I simply make it possible for them to tell their stories."

So far Alan Furst has written ten espionage novels, with more to come, one hopes. The ones I read recently were The Foreign Correspondent Dark Star Red Gold and The Polish Officer. Next up: Night Soldiers, his first book in the espionage and spy series.

There is no need to read these books in any order. Each features unique characters and settings. If you'd like a suggestion, start with The Polish Officer for its pacing, surprises, and extra smoky atmosphere.

Aired Sunday September 14, 2008 at 10:55 am and Wednesday September 18, 2008 at 1:00 pm

NOTES:

Biography from www.alanfurst.net:
Alan Furst was born and raised in Manhattan. He lived in the South of France as a Fulbright Teaching fellow at the Faculte des Lettres at the University of Montpellier, then in Seattle, where he worked for the City of Seattle Arts Commission. He wrote for magazines -- travel pieces and book reviews for Esquire -- and wrote and published four novels. Returning to France, he lived in Paris, wrote a weekly column for The International Herald Tribune, and wrote his first historical espionage novel, Night Soldiers (Houghton Mifflin, 1988). This was followed by Dark Star (Houghton Mifflin,1991), The Polish Officer (Random House, 1995), The World at Night (Random House, 1996), Red Gold (Random House, 1999), Kingdom of Shadows (Random House, 2000), Blood of Victory (Random House, 2002), Dark Voyage (Random House 2004), and The Foreign Correspondent (Random House 2006). His latest book is The Spies of Warsaw published June, 2008. All but the latest of these now are available in trade paperback editions. Furst's novels have been translated into fifteen languages.

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