How could you possibly expect writing like this in a spy thriller? Alan Furst’s writing is so good it is impossible to skim:
Spring died early that year, soft rains came and went, the sky turned its fierce French blue only rarely, a mean little wind arrived at dusk and blew papers around the cobbled streets. The end of April was generally admitted to be triste, only the surrealists liked such unhappy weather, then summer came before anybody was really ready for it.
— Dark Star, p. 111
Kanlaon 