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, Spies of the Balkans (Random House, $26). 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. In the ancient port of Salonika, Greece, in 1940, the invasion is coming, it’s 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. And Zannis 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.