I am a huge fan of the author Alan Furst. On this blog, a year ago, I declared him to be the American John le Carre — and by no means was I the first to suggest that.

Actually, Furst is better. Even before Le Carre turned into a political bore.

Since I discovered Furst, about three years ago, I have read the first 12 of his “Night Soldiers” novels, and then re-read them all. And re-re-read more than one. Last week, I finished what was, I think, my fourth pass through Dark Star.

All of his work is compelling, intelligent, graceful. And evocative of a lost era. He brings to life the Europe of the middle-to-late 1930s, where nearly everyone knew something awful was about to happen. And it was: The Second World War.

Yet, as a writer, Furst was under the radar for years, if not decades. That has changed, of late. Do a search of the New York Times website, and several reviews pop up, all of them positive, all of them from the past 10 years.

Somehow, it was while reading the reviews that I discovered Furst this year had a 13th “Night Soldiers” novel published. Which I bought for my Kindle about 10 minutes later.

And the result?

Furst’s worst.

This seems a classic case of an auteur struggling for years to get the recognition he or she deserves … and then once it finally arrives, he or she produces work not up to the earlier standards.

Midnight in Europe certainly fits that description, though NYT gave it a very positive review.

It is shorter than his nearly all of his earlier books, and a bit too similar to previous work he has done — in which chunks of the plot revolve around the Spanish Civil War.

But where Furst falls short of his previous work is his abandonment, for the most part, of what he had conveyed as a morally ambiguous Europe. One in which Hitler’s Germany is the clear-and-present danger … but never failing to point out that Stalin’s Soviet Union was as least as monstrous and murderous. (And on its way to a much longer existence.)

In “Midnight in Europe”, in which the Spanish Civil War is always in the background, it’s about 90 percent “evil fascists” — when the Spanish Civil War was difficult to categorize. (Which Furst, in previous novels, had stressed.)

Atrocities were committed by both sides. The Republicans, who most Western democrats would instinctively lean towards, got much of their weaponry from the Soviets and at times seemed to be run out of Moscow.

During the Second World War, backing Franco’s Nationalists was considered a horrible mistake. Fair enough. But from about 1950 till the fall of the Soviet Empire (the length of the Cold War, that is), the notion of supporting the foreign policy of the Soviet Union (by backing the Republicans in Spain) seemed like an equally bad idea, and maybe worse, because of the USSR’s longevity.

Also, Furst’s Germany of 1938 has been reduced to a cartoon. This, from an author who in his previous 12 books made a point of suggesting the possibility of some humanity in Germans — particularly among those caught up in a regime they did not support.

If I had not read his other 12 books, I probably would have liked this one just fine.

But I have seen his earlier work (and his earliest is the best).  I read “Midnight in Europe” with high expectations … and this latest book is easily the least impressive of the no-longer-obscure Alan Furst.