Spies of the Balkans
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Narrated by:
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Daniel Gerroll
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By:
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Alan Furst
About this listen
Greece, 1940. Not sunny vacation Greece: northern Greece, Macedonian Greece, Balkan Greece, the city of Salonika. In that ancient port, with its wharves and warehouses, dark lanes and Turkish mansions, brothels and tavernas, a tense political drama is being played out. On the northern border, the Greek army has blocked Mussolini's invasion, pushing his divisions back to Albania, the first defeat suffered by the Nazis, who have conquered most of Europe. But Adolf Hitler cannot tolerate such freedom; the invasion is coming; its only a matter of time, and the people of Salonika can only watch and wait.
At the center of this drama is Costa Zannis, a senior police official, head of an office that handles special political cases. As war approaches, the spies begin to circle, from the Turkish legation to the German secret service. There's a British travel writer, a Bulgarian undertaker, and more.
Costa Zannis must deal with them all. And he is soon in the game, securing an escape route from Berlin to Salonika, and then to a tenuous safety in Turkey, a route protected by German lawyers, Balkan detectives, and Hungarian gangsters. And hunted by the Gestapo.
Meanwhile, as war threatens, the erotic life of the city grows passionate. For Zannis, that means a British expatriate who owns the local ballet academy, a woman from the dark side of Salonika society, and the wife of a local shipping magnate.
Declared an incomparable expert at his game by The New York Times, Alan Furst outdoes even his own finest novels in this thrilling new book. With extraordinary authenticity, a superb cast of characters, and heart-stopping tension as it moves from Salonika to Paris to Berlin and back, Spies of the Balkans is a stunning novel about a man who risks everything to right - in many small ways - the world's evil.
©2010 Alan Furst (P)2010 Simon & SchusterListeners also enjoyed...
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Herman Wouk's sweeping epic of World War II stands as the crowning achievement of one of America's most celebrated storytellers. Like no other books about the war, Wouk's spellbinding narrative captures the tide of global events - and all the drama, romance, heroism, and tragedy of World War II - as it immerses us in the lives of a single American family drawn into the very center of the war's maelstrom.
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A Masterpiece
- By Robert on 05-24-13
By: Herman Wouk
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Single & Single
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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A lawyer from the London finance house of Single & Single is shot dead on a Turkish hillside by people with whom he thought he was in business. A children's magician is asked by his bank to explain the unsolicited arrival of more than five million pounds sterling in his young daughter's modest trust. A freighter bound for Liverpool is boarded by Russian coast guards in the Black Sea. The celebrated London merchant venturer "Tiger" Single disappears into thin air.
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The spy who came back to the bank
- By Darwin8u on 03-12-14
By: John le Carré
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Night Life
- By: David C. Taylor
- Narrated by: Keith Szarabajka
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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New York City, 1954. The Cold War is heating up, Senator Joe McCarthy is running a witch hunt for communists in America, the newly formed CIA is fighting a turf battle with the FBI to see who will be the primary United States intelligence agency, and the bodies of murdered young men are turning up all over the city.
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terrific in every way
- By Martha on 04-12-16
By: David C. Taylor
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The Mark of the Assassin
- Michael Osbourne, Book 1
- By: Daniel Silva
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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When a commercial airliner is blown out of the sky off the East Coast, the CIA scrambles to find the perpetrators. A body is discovered near the crash site with three bullets to the face: the calling card of a shadowy international assassin.
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Uncanny Portentous Prophecy
- By Snoodely on 10-27-13
By: Daniel Silva
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Hornet Flight
- By: Ken Follett
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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It's June 1941, and the low point of the war. England throws wave after wave of RAF bombers across the Channel, but somehow the Luftwaffe is able to shoot them down at will. The skies, indeed, the war itself seem to belong to Hitler.
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An Outstanding Spy Novel
- By C. McCoy on 03-13-05
By: Ken Follett
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Stormbreaker
- The First Alex Rider Adventure
- By: Anthony Horowitz
- Narrated by: Nathaniel Parker
- Length: 4 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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They said his uncle Ian died in a car accident. Alex Rider knows that's a lie, and the bullet holes in his uncle's car confirm the truth. But nothing can prepare him for the news that the uncle he always thought he knew was really a spy for Britain's top-secret intelligence agency. Enlisted to find his uncle's killers and complete Ian's final mission, Alex suddenly finds himself caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse, with no way out.
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Okay action story held up by an great narrator
- By Mary Fan on 08-13-13
By: Anthony Horowitz
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Layover in Dubai
- A Novel
- By: Dan Fesperman
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Corporate auditor Sam Keller, careful to a fault, has decided to live it up for a change. And what better spot for business-class hedonism than the boomtown of Dubai, where resort islands materialize from open ocean, fortunes are made overnight, and skiers crisscross the snowy slopes of a shopping mall. But when a colleague is murdered during a night on the town, Sam soon finds himself waist-deep in a bewildering, lethal mix of mobsters, prostitutes, and crooked cops.
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Dubai Dubai Doo
- By itinerant on 02-14-12
By: Dan Fesperman
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Pietr the Latvian
- Inspector Maigret, Book 1
- By: Georges Simenon, David Bellos - translator
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 3 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The first audiobook which appeared in Georges Simenon's famous Maigret series, in a gripping new translation by David Bellos.Inevitably Maigret was a hostile presence in the Majestic. He constituted a kind of foreign body that the hotel's atmosphere could not assimilate. Not that he looked like a cartoon policeman. He didn't have a moustache and he didn't wear heavy boots. His clothes were well cut and made of fairly light worsted. He shaved every day and looked after his hands. But his frame was proletarian. He was a big, bony man.
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Long live Maigret
- By Adeliese Baumann on 11-19-14
By: Georges Simenon, and others
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Liars & Thieves
- Tommy Carmellini, Book 1
- By: Stephen Coonts
- Narrated by: Guerin Barry
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Tommy Carmellini is sent to post guard duty at a farmhouse in Virginia's remote Blue Ridge Mountains, where top government operatives are debriefing a star defector: the ultimate KGB insider, a man with records on every operation and every dirty trick the shadowy intelligence agency has ever run, from Lenin to Putin.
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Fast Paced - Good Read!
- By Andrew Stone on 01-11-09
By: Stephen Coonts
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Koko
- Blue Rose Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Peter Straub
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 22 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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KOKO. Only four men knew what it meant. Now they must stop it. They are Vietnam vets — a doctor, a lawyer, a working stiff, and a writer. Very different from each other, they are nonetheless linked by a shared history and a single shattering secret. Now, they have been reunited and are about to embark on a quest that will take them from Washington, D.C., to the graveyards and fleshpots of the Far East to the human jungle of New York.
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7 hours in and I am done
- By bionichands on 01-26-12
By: Peter Straub
What listeners say about Spies of the Balkans
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 10-21-22
Another great book by Furst
Strong characters; plot moves along; fascinating information about Eastern Europe’s experiences in WWII.
Strongly recommend
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- A. Kiss
- 09-20-10
Intriguing story with captivating characters
A good story about some good people in a very bad time. Not much has been written about this particular theater of the war, so this book is a good contribution.
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- Darrell Bibby
- 01-06-20
Most Enjoyable
Most Enjoyable to be sure. Daniel Gerroll's reading was suburb and the story is a good yarn about a slice of WWII that takes place mostly in Thessaloniki, Greece. I've recently spent some time in the Balkans, mostly Albania but always a neat feeling when the story takes place in cities one is familiar with. It's got suspense, love, and danger with the familiar cast of characters you should know and love if you've read other war novels. And there are some great passages of prose mixed in with all the drama. A good read to be sure.
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- Yaryna
- 06-25-10
Smart and understated
A very enjoyable read. The historical backdrop is the real star of this book, and you can't help but become involved in the uncertainty and fear that permeated the months leading up to the occupation of Greece. You get a fantastic sense of the relationships, the dynamics and pasts of Balkan countries and the psychology of their peoples. I enjoyed the narration a great deal - a very unusual reading style that you will learn to appreciate as you absorb the book.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Peter W.
- 11-29-10
Very REAL!!
As you listen to this one, you can practically "hear" the Nazis coming. Character development is exceedingly well done. The "action" is subdued - but completely realistic and believable - as if the writer were actually THERE at the time of the story.
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- nyog
- 04-19-17
Mr Furst has lost whatever edge he had
I am actually commenting on two books, Mission to Paris and Spies of the Balkans, because my comments are essentially identical. I read quite a few Furst novels over a few years. Then they started feeling a bit stale, so I set them aside. Recently, I tried the two mentioned here. I got through Spies with effort, but had to stop reading Mission. Mr Furst has settled into so much of a pattern that it's impossible to stay interested. Some aspect of European confict in or around WWII. A suave, sophisticated, male European protagonist. A succession of sexually available women. The characters, taken individually, lack real emotional resonance and depth. And taken together they are very much from the same few cookie cutters. Too bad. His first two or three Midnight Soldier novels promised more.
The narrator does his best, but even he seems a little bored on these recent outings.
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- Jason
- 06-20-10
Terrific Spy Story for Balkan Enthusiasts
Furst leads the reader into multi-cultural, multi-ethnic pre-Second World War Thessaloniki (Salonika) with a fascinating spy story. One can almost taste the grilled octopus and retsina wine, and smell the Aegean Sea. The Swastika looms large as the characters face the inevitability of war.
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6 people found this helpful
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- writerly
- 06-20-10
historical insights, not much suspense/tension
I'm familiar with The Polish Officer and Dark Star and I was incredibly disappointed with this book. Admittedly, I am interested in spy/espionage/thrillers with tension and suspense driving the characters. This book seemed mired in historical details piled upon details, most of which led nowhere, dramatically speaking, but more a statement by the author about his take on events past. A comparison, though perhaps not a perfect one, would be a very knowledgable history teacher telling a story set in the past in another locale, only to abandon storytelling frequently and elaborate on historical events at that time and place.
Perfunctory bits about the protagonist recalling women brushing up against him, musing about their name, sketching a past event with them, never had me engaged in relationships with them, therefore no sense of loss when things didn't work out, when they were left behind and lost.
Long sections attempting by the author to get into the heart of darkness of a man at odds with his environs and associates, felt like verbal angst from the author, not from character actions and resulting reactions. There were so many characters that in depth exploration was usually a stated opinion of the first person speaker, not displayed by characters Events were introduced in a way that built predictability of their outcome, drained suspense from one section to the next.
It was an effort to stay with this reading until the end, though the reader's character interpretations were captivating in tone at times. I'm not sure of the primary interest of readers who praise it but it's not a book I recommend for hounds of spy, thriller, espionage stories against international and historical backdrops..
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16 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Daniel
- 08-22-10
Alan Furst's usual high quality, well narrated
This time most of the action is in Greece, an unusual locale for WWII thrillers, which makes it all the more interesting. Furst's intelligent, realistic approach to espionage at its best.
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- Janel Dolan Jones
- 02-18-17
Another triumph.
Not one to be fascinated with war stories, I've become a serious fan of Furst ' s stories about various participants in the espionage involved in WWII Europe. He weaves fascinating tales that draw you into the action, sprinkles just enough factual history to make it real while providing perspective and populates with rich, real characters. Much suspense, wit and masterful dialog make his stories a pleasure to experience. Mr. Gerroll is superb. His delivery and nuanced performance is everything. Hooked after the first book I heard, I purchased every one in the collection that he performs. Bravo!
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