The Paris Drop

Roger Levin #2

by Alan Furst

Dust jacket design by Muni Lieblein. His 2nd book. A novel set in Paris about sex, money, adventure & fear. A classic spy thriller.

Genres: Fiction

227 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Alan Furst is widely recognized as the current master of the historical spy novel. Born in New York, he has lived for long periods in France, especially Paris. He now lives on Long Island.

Night Soldiers novels
* Night Soldiers (1988)
* Dark Star (1991)
* The Polish Officer (1995)
* The World at Night (1996)
* Red Gold (1999)
* Kingdom of Shadows (2000)
* Blood of Victory (2003)
* Dark Voyage (2004)
* The Foreign Correspondent (2006)
* The Spies of Warsaw (2008)
* Spies of the Balkans (2010)
* Mission to Paris (2012)
* Midnight in Europe (2013)
* Under Occupation (2019)

Stand-alone novels
* Your day in the barrel (1976)
* The Paris drop (1980)
* The Caribbean Account (1981)
* Shadow Trade (1983)

For more information, see Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Ken French · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like Furst's WWII thrillers, so I decided to check out one of his earlier books from the library. I chose this one because of the Paris locale. However, his writing style hadn't yet developed at this time. The plot hinged on a few heavy-handed coincidences and it was hard to understand why so many people were so worked up about the substance hidden in the ring.

[Judith Rudikoff]

Takes me back to NYC & The Bronx - it's a setting I didn't expect, but am enjoying...Couldn't stay with it.

[E · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to rate. Somewhere in the 2 to 3 range, I suppose a bit closer to the latter. Won't be surprised to see Alan Furst's favorite city show up in the title of his second novel. I've always thought his Night Soldiers plots were sneakily simplistic. This is is the opposite--unnecessarily complex. Our ex-drug dealer "hero" is now delivering money from a New York temple to a pro-Israeli outfit based in Paris. But he's also delivering a class ring from his uncle to Paris as well (that's the "O" on the cover). But what's so special about this ring . . . I won't spoil the surprise, but it did make me laugh. What a MacGuffin. The plot was equal parts surreal and implausible, but somehow I don't think my review is doing it justice, because I just awarded it three stars. Somehow Furst managed to write a third novel in this series before going on to something else (not Night Soldiers), so I'm quite curious to see how he managed.

[Roslynne Lowry · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having read all of Furst's books about Europe prior and during WWII it is hard to believe this is the same author. I found the book improbable and found myself going back to re-read previous pages many times as the narrative was confusing and disjointed.