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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Mar 2009, 416 pages
Paperback:
Feb 2010, 416 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Amy Reading
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Milo Weaver used to be a “tourist” for the CIA—an undercover agent with no home, no identity. But when the arrest of an assassin exposes new layers of intrigue in his old cases, he has no choice but to go back undercover and find out who’s holding the strings once and for all.
Milo Weaver used to be a “tourist” for the CIA—an undercover agent with no home, no identity—but he’s since retired from the field to become a middle-level manager at the CIA’s New York headquarters. He’s acquired a wife, a daughter, and a brownstone in Brooklyn, and he’s tried to leave his old life of secrets and lies behind. However, when the arrest of a long-sought-after assassin sets off an investigation into one of Milo’s oldest colleagues and exposes new layers of intrigue in his old cases, he has no choice but to go back undercover and find out who’s holding the strings once and for all.
In The Tourist, Olen Steinhauer---twice nominated for an Edgar Award---tackles an intricate story of betrayal and manipulation, loyalty and risk in an utterly compelling novel that is both thoroughly modern and yet also reminiscent of the espionage genre’s luminaries: Len Deighton, Graham Greene, and John LeCarré.
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, TO
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
1
Four hours after his failed suicide attempt, he descended toward
Aerodrom Ljubljana. A tone sounded, and above his head the seat
belt sign glowed. Beside him, a Swiss businesswoman buckled her
belt and gazed out the window at the clear Slovenian sky—allit
had taken was one initial rebuff to convince her that the twitching
American she’d been seated next to had no interest in conversation.
The American closed his eyes, thinking about the morning’s
failure in Amsterdam—gunfire, shattering glass and splintered wood,
sirens.
If suicide is sin, he thought, then what is it to someone who
doesn’t believe in sin? What is it then? An abomination of nature?
Probably, because the one immutable law of nature is to continue
existing. Witness: weeds, cockroaches, ants, and pigeons. All of nature’s
creatures work to a single, unified purpose: to stay alive. It’s
the one indisputable theory ...
The Tourist is fast, slick, and gratifying... Though violations of rudimentary spycraft will drive some readers crazy, sometimes a story is so good at granting you an alternative look at your own world that you tug and pull to make it fit just right...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Amy Reading).
Lee Child
A first-class spy novel - wry, intelligent, layered ... the kind of thing John le Carré might have written if he knew then what we know now. Nelson DeMille
The Tourist is an absolutely superb contemporary espionage novel in the great tradition of the old masters of the genre. Olen Steinhauer is a wonderful storyteller who is smart, observant, and witty. The Tourist has what it take to become a classic. Thomas Perry
Olen Steinhauer's The Tourist is a complex, fast-paced spy novel populated by dozens of striking characters, each with an unexpected, shifting place in the puzzle.Representing the Clandestine
If Tourism, Olen Steinhauer's invented black-ops division within the CIA, were
real, what would its insignia look like? Trevor Paglen has documented seventy-five
shoulder patches designed for United States covert agencies in his book, I
Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me. (The title
is a translation from Latin of the patch for the Navy Air Test and Evaluation
Squadron 4, at Point Mugu in California).
He submitted hundreds of Freedom of
Information requests for the images, then decoded their heraldry and iconography
by interviewing military men and women. If, for instance, you see a patch with
five stars on top and one star on the bottom, you know it has ...
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