The Tourist

Edgar award winning novelist Olen Steinhauer has written a terrific novel in "The Tourist". In CIA parlance, a "tourist" is an agency assassin. As Steinhauer portrays it, the CIA has a score or more "tourists" strategically placed around the world . They sit and wait; awaiting instructions as to whom the company has decided next needs to die. The book focuses on one such tourist, Milo Weaver. His time as a tourist has left him psychologically damaged, not destroyed, but incapable of enjoying life. Weaver lives in a world that he can not precisely perceive. He lives in a world of uncertainty, never being permitted to grasp the big picture, only the bottom right hand corner. He seldom knows why an individual becomes one of his targets, only that the company wants him dead. And for that portion of reality that he does perceive, he doesn't know what to truly believe or, for that matter, whom to trust. It is this nebulous world in which he lives that has driven him just slightly off center. Without giving away the plot, we follow Weaver as he attempts to regain normalcy, by coming in from the cold. However, in Weaver's case, as it has been for so many others, a spy that comes in from the cold is seldom left to enjoy the warmth of normal home life. Weaver is soon cast out into the world of duplicity to chase a ghost from his previous life. Steinhauer weaves an excellent tale. The reader is drawn into Milo Weaver's world and, through the author's lies of omissions, we see the world as it appears to Weaver, a mystery wrapped in an enigma. This is an excellent book; worthy of mention along with the finest efforts of Le Carre and Greene. If you enjoy the works of the aforementioned authors, you will find this book to be a new found treasure. George Clooney and Warner Brothers have optioned the film rights. It would make a wonderful vehicle for Clooney.

Wow. What a great book. I thought when I started this novel that it would take me a long time to read. Not so... I finished it in 3 days... could not put it down. It is up there with Eye of the Needle and The Tailor of Panama. Great protagonist... he is so intriguing, you just can't help yourself finding out more about him. This is definately the best modern, post 9/11 spy novel I have read... I put it up there with The Spy Who Came in from the Cold... which, by the way, is referred to in this novel... excellent.

Highly trained special agents called Tourists work out of 4 secret floors on the Ave. of Americas. Tourists are on permanent travel status operating in all populated countries unquestionably carrying out orders whether they are dropping off a package or calling a number with a code word, or exterminating an opponent. Milo, the Tourist in the story finds it harder and harder to cope with the disembodiment of non residency. The longer he is a Tourist the harder it becomes to determine who he can trust. After some time his own employer called The Company is under suspicion. The novel starts out slowly, but soon had me unable to put it down. An excerpt "All Tourists know the importance of awareness. When you enter a room or a park, you chart the escapes immediately. You take in the potential weapons around you - a chair, ballpoint pen, letter opener, or even the loose low hanging branch on a tree behind Milo's bench. At the same time you consider the faces. Are they aware of you? Or are they feigning a forced ignorance that is the hallmark of other Tourists? Because Tourists are seldom proactive, the best ones bring you to them."

I love a good spy novel and this one paid off in spades. The author has put together an original look at the genre with a great hook and follows it up with great action and thrills. This is the story of CIA agent Milo Weaver aka a "Tourist." A Tourist is a special type of CIA field agent, agents with no name and no place they call home, doing things that can only be performed by such shadowy figures. Things their government never want to be connected with, but want accomplished. Milo retired from being a Tourist six years earlier and now has a home and family and a stable life. But of course his past comes back to haunt him, and this is the great hook! Milo is entangled in a far-reaching plot as he is a suspect in a murder investigation. That forces him to leave the country in search of evidence that can clear his name. The plot involves terrorism, espionage, murder and foreign oil deals. The book has all the expected heart stopping action and suspense as it jets the reader around the world. But what really made it something better than the norm was its introspective look at the main character Milo, and the effect his life of danger has on his psyche. I hear George Clooney has purchased the film rights to this book and it should make a bang up movie! I wish he'd get the rights to the other "Tourist" thriller A Tourist In The Yucatan!