Furst, Alan Dark Voyage

Set in the Spring and early Summer of 1941, this is a superb World War 2 espionage novel set aboard a Dutch freighter (the fictitious NOORDENDAM) which, sailing disguised as a neutral Spanish vessel (the SANTA ROSA), undertakes two dangerous — and highly secret — voyages for the British Admiralty, first in the Mediterranean (taking British commandos on a raid against a French installation in Tunisia) and then later to the Baltic (setting up a secret radio listening post on the southern coast of Sweden). Furst’s novel is an atmospheric page-turner and if some of his plot twists seem a bit contrived, his evocation of wartime Mediterranean and Baltic ports nevertheless reads true. Particularly telling are his descriptions of Alexandria and Lisbon, of how both ports adapted economically to wartime conditions and how their citizens managed to achieve some semblance of normal daily life despite the war. Dark Voyage’s climax is a real nail-biter as the NOORDENDAM, in the wrong place at the wrong time, gets embroiled in Hitler’s secret attack against Russia. Press-ganged into a Russian emergency convoy evacuating Latvia, the NOORDENDAM and her crew only just barely escape destruction in the upper Baltic before finding refuge in officially neutral Finland.