Odessa -- city of Jewish gangsters, birthplace of Trotsky and ace spy Sidney Reilly, a mixture of chicken markets and Palladian architecture. The story begins on a Black Sea freighter in the winter of 1940. A.A. Serebin, poet and journalist, is on his way to Istanbul to effect the release of a former lover. The novel brings Serebin and his protector, police officer Ascher Odessa -- city of Jewish gangsters, birthplace of Trotsky and ace spy Sidney Reilly, a mixture of chicken markets and Palladian architecture. The story begins on a Black Sea freighter in the winter of 1940. A.A. Serebin, poet and journalist, is on his way to Istanbul to effect the release of a former lover. The novel brings Serebin and his protector, police officer Ascher Levitch, into contact with a foreign espionage network centred in the Russian emigre communities of Paris, Berlin and Belgrade, as well as in Odessa itself. Blood of Victory is a panoramic novel, moving between Istanbul, Bucharest, Paris, Sofia and the Black Sea coast, involving Turkish secret police, Russian chekhists, French aristocrats, Roumanian millionaires, Polish exiles and British spies. It is Alan Furst at his uniquely brilliant best. Fursts ability to recreate the terrors of espionage is matchless -- Robert Harris Nothing can be like watching CASABLANCA for the first time, but Furst comes closer than anyone has in years -- Time