Name: Europe in Autumn
Rating: 3.666666666666667 (9 reviews)
ISBN: 9781849976565

Dave Hutchinson

Europe in Autumn

David Hutchinson

"Rudi is a cook in a Kraków restaurant, but when his boss asks Rudi to help a cousin escape from the country he's trapped in, a new career -- part spy, part people-smuggler -- begins. Following multiple economic crises and a devastating flu pandemic, Europe has fractured into countless tiny nations, duchies, polities and republics. Recruited by the shadowy organisation Les Coureurs des Bois, Rudi is schooled in espionage, but when a training mission to The Line, a sovereign nation consisting of a trans-Europe railway line, goes wrong, he is arrested, beaten and Coureur Central must attempt a rescue. With so many nations to work in, and identities to assume, Rudi is kept busy travelling across Europe. But when he is sent to smuggle someone out of Berlin and finds a severed head inside a locker instead, a conspiracy begins to wind itself around him. With kidnapping, double-crosses and a map that constantly re-draws, Rudi begins to realise that underneath his daily round of plot and counter plot, behind the conflicting territories, another entirely different reality might be pulling the strings"--Amazon.com, viewed February 7, 2014.

Pavonini

Love the concept. The execution starts well but became (for me) muddled, with odd pacing later on. I struggled to finish it.

The multiple award-nominated visionary thriller of future espionage, broken borders, people smuggling, betrayal and an impossible secret The Guardian called, “a spellbinding novel of intrigue and paranoia”. Europe as we know it is gone. Devastated by a flu pandemic and crippled by economic collapse, the continent has fractured into countless tiny nations, a fragile web of shifting alliances seething with espionage and strange new technologies. In a small restaurant in Krakow, chef Rudi is drawn into a new career with Les Coureurs des Bois, a shadowy organisation that will move anything across any state line – for a price. Soon, Rudi is in a world of high-risk smuggling operations, where kidnappings and double-crosses are as natural as a map that constantly redraws itself.

Europe in Autumn

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