I'm just a guy from the West Side of New York. It spooks me sometimes. Strolling down Main Street in Sag Harbor, N.Y., PW catches nary a glimpse of intrigue. No spies dart here among the white clapboard houses, the red brick American Hotel, the firehouse, the old Variety store, the Civil War monument. Such a sleepy, innocent town seems an unlikely haunt for historical espionage writer Alan Furst, but this fabled Hamptons community is where the author of sophisticated World War II dramas makes his home.
Sag Harbor does boast an impressive literary history.
Walt Whitman walked these streets in the great whaling days. John Steinbeck and Nelson Algren lived here a century later, and these days, many contemporary writers and editors make their summer home here. Down the street today, town regulars are gathering for lunch at the Paradise Caf . The Paradise has gone through many incarnations since it was a sandwich shop in Steinbeck's day. Now it is a combination bookstore and restaurant, the restaurant downstairs and books all around, upstairs and down.