I interviewed mystery author Alan Furst today at BEA. Furst is the author of ten historical spy thrillers set in Europe in the 30s and 40s. He was a genuine delight—at the end of the interview, he gave me his home phone number in case I needed more information, which is, I think, a first for me; I've never had an author do that before.

Furst wrote for the Seattle Weekly back in the 70s when it started. He mostly wrote a football column, but he eventually started writing a serial for the paper that he says was "terrible. I tried, I did the best I could. It ran every week and it had its own sponsor—Yukie and Wendy's Hair Salon—and it was very popular." Furst says the story "went from Seattle location to Seattle location," and it featured many types of people he saw in Seattle at the time, "the Jewish charity lady from Mercer Island and...the vet from Vietnam. "

Furst is a meticulous researcher—his books are packed with period detail, lovingly rendered—and he says that nowadays it takes him "about three months" to research a book and then "about a year to actually write it. It used to take longer, but "I've written ten books on the time period" and so he's got quite a library set up at home. Also, "I didn't have the internet for five books. It made everything better."

He's always had an interest in history—on reading my name tag, Furst immediately asked if I was related to the Constants who fought in the Revolutionary War and insisted that I research Benjamin Constant. That said, his interest in World War II-era Poland and France was a "complete insane accident" that came about when he went on assignment to Moscow for Esquire magazine. "I'd never been in a police state. It had a really heavy effect on me." Soon enough, Furst says, "I decided that I wanted to read a panoramic spy novel set in the 30s and 40s. And it didn't exist! If you ask most writers, they'll say that they wrote the book that they wanted to read." He's happy being a bestselling author of books set in a very particular time period. "I'm never going to change. Every time I write one story I find two more."

I'll be running the interview in its entirety—about his influence and his wonderful supporting characters and more about his time living in Seattle—once I transcribe it. Furst is coming to town on June 11th at Third Place Books. If you're into espionage, his books make terrific summer reading.