The World at Night (Jean Casson Series #1)

Booklist

With deft texturing and tight storytelling, Furst puts film producer Jean Casson into perilously exciting jams in German-occupied Paris. So complicated are Casson's problems, yet so clearly and cleverly constructed his extrications, that Furst never forces solutions, demonstrating that he wields that authentic literariness essential to the better espionage titles.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

With uninspired plotting, Furst makes disappointing use of a vividly evoked wartime Paris in his latest WWII espionage novel (The Polish Officer; Dark Star; Night Soldiers). Hedonistic Parisian film producer Jean Casson thrives in Paris's active film industry, enjoying the colorful social scene, the posh restaurants and the beautiful, available women. But this world he knows so well all but disappears when Germans march into France and seize the city. At first, Casson strives merely to survive, but he's soon drawn into duty as an amateur intelligence operative and finds himself in a precarious position, buffeted by British Intelligence, resistance forces and the Gestapo. In the process, Casson discovers two powerful forces within himself-his patriotism and his consuming passion for an old lover, the beautiful actress Citrine. Furst brings this fascinating, historic Paris to life with his usual masterful use of period detail. But while Casson makes an intriguing protagonist, his relationships with other characters are presented rather schematically-in particular, his affair with Citrine, which ultimately proves so influential, is never satisfactorily developed. More importantly, Casson's career as a spy, marked by mixed success on missions that seem insignificant, is anticlimactic and a bit confusing. In the end, the novel never attains the dramatic pitch of Furst's recent The Polish Officer. (June)

Library Journal

Jean-Claude Casson lives a hedonistic Paris existence as a low-budget film producer until the Germans invade France in 1940. Casson's need to continue working almost leads him into collaborating with the enemy. He is saved, temporarily, by the intervention of a group he thinks is British intelligence. He decides to work for the French Resistance only to have the Gestapo try to coerce him into betraying them. Furst, who has written several other World War II espionage tales, masterfully conveys a sense of daily life in occupied Paris, where even finding a newspaper was an ordeal. While the atmosphere is strong, Furst's storytelling skills are weak, shifting uneasily among the novel's many strands without always making the connections necessary for following the convoluted, often arbitrary, developments. The author also spends too much time on the producer's complicated love life, though he paints a vivid picture of the casualness of sexual relations in wartime. Stephen Thorne reads with a genteel English accent when a more earthy narration is called for. Recommended only for collections where Furst's works are popular.--Michael Adams, CUNY Graduate Ctr. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Library Journal

While working undercover for the British in Paris during the German occupation, film producer Jean Casson finds that he has become an unwitting accomplice in a plot to rob the British Secret Service of a great deal of money. The British pressure him to work for them to prove his trustworthiness; the Germans turn him into a double agent. A friend laments: "We're toys to them, Casson-if we don't sing and dance, we're broken." Casson drifts without hiding place in a world of exceedingly nasty actors, his only anchor his love affair with an aging actress. "We all thought...life would go on," muses a colleague of Casson, "But it won't." A novel of mood as much as action, this is worth reading. Recommended for public libraries.-David Keymer, California State Univ., Stanislaus

Kirkus Reviews

The throes of masculine existential torment are an unquestionable specialty for Furst (The Polish Officer, 1995), whose WW II fiction combines so much broad historical erudition with such genuine humanity that they ought to be made required reading.

Once again, Furst loads the entire burden of an aspect of the war on the shoulders of a single character, then scrutinizes that character as he changes. It's the old rat-in-the-maze game, played for very high stakes. Jean Casson, at the outset, is a slightly libertine, slightly dissolute, slightly bankrupt film producer with several moderately successful but unremarkable movies under his belt. Above all else, Casson is French, and above being French, he's Parisian. Though his tastes may be definitively bourgeois, his heart is restless, a condition typified by his extremely Gallic womanizing. On the verge of developing his first real hit—a project called Hotel Dorado—his life is shattered by the Nazi drive through Belgium and into Paris. Inhabiting an occupied city filled with repulsive Germans and ready collaborators, Casson's long-brewing crisis of purpose gets him embroiled in an elaborate double-cross that involves the British Secret Service, furtive trips to Spain and to the French countryside, and a host of shadowy minor characters, each perfectly captured in Furst's lacerating prose. A terrified, reluctant spy, Casson survives mainly on panache and dumb luck. There's plenty of sex amid the rubble of a wrecked Continent, but Casson's heart truly belongs to Citrine, the beautiful young actress who's set to star in Hotel Dorado. At times, the author seems more concerned with atmosphere than action, but fans will recognize his gift for making every gesture an expression of character and allow him to get away with it. The payoff is worth the wait.

Furst has somehow discovered the perfect venue for uniting the European literary tragedy with the Anglo-American spy thriller. Nobody does it better.