A decent spy thriller based on real people and real events taking place shortly after WWII with the author Graham Green, who was also behind some of the most popular films of the era. Using trips to scout locations for these movies and his books, he was secretly embroiled in a world of secrets no one was aware of until years after his death.

I am a fan of Graham Greene's work, but the last thing I expected when I picked up this graphic novel is that I would be revisiting old favorites and adding some of his books to my TBR pile!

Thank you to Net Galley for a free copy of this book in trade for an honest review.

This review is also posted in my blog : https://onewordtoomuch.wordpress.com/2018/03/13/the-czech-coup/

It’s a heavy read, especially if you are not interested in the post war history. This comic requires a bit of understanding of who’s who and what’s what. Not an easy read, something that you really need to study and might need at least twice to read before really understand the story.

Setting in the post WW II, the story follows the story of former spies who turned into writers and reporter or club owner. There are many characters that I don’t understand and not recognize. But I’m not a big fan of WWII history, so it might also be because of that.

Illustration style is quite ok, with the water color effect and the brownish color tone. It really set the mood of the gloom and mysterious story. What I don’t like is the lack of expression on the character drawings. It’s like every character wear the same gloomy expression. Even when they visit the club, there’s no joy or lust. It’s weird. It’s like reading a mannequin in paper.

Recommend for those who like the post WW II history, gloomy and mysterious characters.

Being a fan of Graham Greene, I should have lapped this book up - it suggests a real-life series of shenanigans with the unrepentant sinner and spy carrying on his, er, duties, while researching what would become The Third Man. And I did enjoy the book - beyond the blokes looking a little similar, and a peculiar scene where the artist seems to have given us the wrong character entirely, it looks great. But the problem was that it was a little unlikely - and the hokum certainly made for a poorer example of the 'diversions' some very clunky dialogue reminded us of. I wouldn't object to the idea of recommending it, but it's never going to be of a kind with what inspired it.

The Czech Coup was a very wonderful historical novel that combined a lot of things thay I love :)
I would definitely recommend this to anyone whom likes to read historical fiction <3

This graphic novel has a very interesting art style. A decent story too.

This is a mixed review... the artwork is made up of a lovely watercolor type effect. The impact makes the images fit the era's feel. But my complaint is that the result is the the persons all look alike. Especially all the male characters - making the story difficult to follow. The story line itself is complex and the lack of distinction in the forms just makes it more cumbersome.

Really wanted to like this book but I just couldn't.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher, Europe Comics, for the opportunity to read this ARC.

I'm not sure whether it would be an advantage or a disadvantage to have seen Carol Reed's 1949 thriller The Third Man before reading Jean-Luc Fromental's The Czech Coup, as the graphic novel is very much based around Graham Greene's writing of the film. It's hard to imagine any circumstance where lack of familiarity with one of the greatest films of post-WWII, pre-Cold War espionage could be seen as an advantage, but familiarity with Carol Reed's masterpiece does automatically put The Czech Coup at the disadvantage of being compared to a work that it can never match. While it might be no match as a thriller, there is nonetheless some interest in exploring or imagining what might have inspired the work and might been going on in the background to its creation.

Graham Greene, as well as being one of Britain's greatest writers known for his spy and war thrillers as well as for his more personal literary dramas, was indeed involved with British Intelligence during the war. The idea of Greene also continuing to be involved in spying, and being associated in particularly with some of the most notorious Cold War spies later revealed as Russian agents, has also been a matter of speculation over the years. The Czech Coup finds it interesting then to hone in on a critical work by Graham Greene that is very much set in those crucial post-war years, when the lines and sectors that divided the war-torn Vienna match the divisions and allegiances that were forming in times of somewhat murky morality.

In The Czech Coup, Greene, frequently referred to as 'G.', is accompanied by an intelligence agent, Elizabeth Montagu to Vienna. Greene is in Vienna looking for ideas, inspiration and local colour for a film he is writing for Alexander Korda, to be directed by Carol Reed. Montagu is there to guide G. through the complex bureaucracy and dangerous post-war climate of the devastated city and introduce him to people who might be able to provide him with ideas for the film. She quickly notes that Greene has attracted the attention of photographers and the American CIA, but suspects that Greene has another agenda of his own that he is working secretively on, a mission that also takes him to Prague, which is already becoming enveloped by Russian Iron Curtain.

Fromental's script for The Czech Coup relies very much on The Third Man for many of its characters and incidents, but it does well to make them feel like real experiences and not just a pastiche of the film. Several familiar characters make appearances, the proprietor of a dark seedy nightclub, a young woman looking to obtain a passport that will help her escape from being claimed by the Russian sector; and then there are the famous locations and scenes; a shadowy figure on a doorstep, a chase through dark, slickly wet cobblestoned streets, a car death on the streets, a visit to Vienna's underground sewer system and even a visit to the wheel in the Prater amusement park. One assumes that Greene researched such locations, so why not assume, considering his own background in Intelligence, that he was also involved in the network of underground espionage and black market activity rife in the city that he writes about as well?

The story holds together well with Greene as the protagonist, a Holly Martins and a Harry Lime combined, but there's less for Elizabeth Montagu to do other than follow him around, speculate and, well, evidently take her clothes off now and again. Hyman's artwork doesn't have the same dark, nightmarish quality as the photography of the Third Man, but the green/browns of the winter dullness and falling snow conjuring up another alternative and equally visual representation of the moral grey-area of life and death amidst the rubble of post-war Vienna. The facial expressions are not strong, but the characters are well-defined, and the storytelling fluidity of the artwork matches the easy flow and intrigue of the storyline.

Published as an eBook by Europe Comics, The Czech Coup looks terrific in the electronic PDF format file that I viewed. The colour reproduction is superb, the lovely clear-line artwork has a wonderful clarity. Being able to view and read a whole page at a time is always problematic on a small hand-held device, but on a 9" tablet in landscape mode, viewing a line of panels at a time, it fits well and is able to be read easily.

Just couldn't really get into this one. In spite of this being a spy tale, it didn't have much sense of action for me. Neither the art nor the story line particularly gripped me.