The Spies of Warsaw

Lieutenant Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier de Boutillon, a lately widowed aristocrat and decorated hero of World War I, has been transferred from the army staff in Beirut to Warsaw as the French military attaché and has built up an espionage network there.

As a result of the attempt on his agent, he is called to Paris to report to his superior, Colonel Bruner, who belongs to the faction of appeasers in the French war office, siding with Marshal Philippe Pétain.

He then passes the Christmas-New Year period with his family at their property in the Drôme, reading up Heinz Guderian's articles on tank tactics and worrying about the impact of the future on ordinary people.

[1] Alessandra Stanley in the New York Times, also finds the plot thin, while explaining that "The mission in a Furst novel is never as interesting as the men and women who volunteer, or are forced to complete it", and the shady associates with whom they must mix on the way.

Like him, "Mercier has aristocratic roots, graduated from military school in the class of 1912, spent time in a German prison camp during World War I and helped Polish troops fight the Red Army in 1920.

"[2] For fellow novelist C. G. Fewston, however, most of the rest of the characters are genre caricatures and the level of writing only comes alive in the light-heartedly skilful sex scenes, spiced with such internal reflections as "Only a princess, he thought, would join a man in the shower but disdain the use of the guest soap".