The Tourist by Olen Steinhauer

From Barnes & Noble

The old adage "CIA agents never retire, they just take temporary leave" rings loud and clear in this novel about a veteran spy called back to service. Milo Weaver had hoped that his days out in the field were over; he had settled into a quiet life in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and a routine job at the Agency's New York headquarters. That soothing monotony ends, however, with the long-overdue arrest of a professional assassin whose past history is deeply entangled with Milo and his former associates. To sort out the troubling threads, Weaver goes underground.

From the Publisher

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.

The Washington Post - Patrick Anderson

Much of the time, neither we nor Weaver has much idea what's going on, but we keep reading because he is likable—a mess but still the most honorable man in view—and because Steinhauer seems to know the world of spies and assassins all too well. In his telling, it's a nasty, duplicitous world, but it feels real…The Tourist is serious entertainment that raises interesting questions.

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

The lazy writer of espionage plots need only concoct a world-weary agent and then send him through a string of perilous escapades. Mr. Steinhauer does something much more interesting. Rather than merely describe Milo Weaver's dizzying exploits, he replicates them; he immerses his reader in the same kind of uncertainty that Milo faces at every turn…Mr. Steinhauer…who can be legitimately mentioned alongside John le Carre…displays a high degree of what Mr. le Carre's characters like to call tradecraft. If he's as smart as The Tourist makes him sound, he'll bring back Milo Weaver for a curtain call.

Publishers Weekly

Edgar-finalist Steinhauer takes a break from his crime series set in an unnamed Eastern European country under Communist rule (Liberation Movements, etc.) to deliver an outstanding stand-alone, a contemporary spy thriller. Milo Weaver used to be a "tourist," one of the CIA's special field agents without a home or a name. Six years after leaving that career, Milo has found a certain amount of satisfaction as a husband and a father and with a desk job at the CIA's New York headquarters. The arrest of an international hit man and a meeting with a former colleague yank Milo back into his old role, from which retirement is never really possible. While plenty of breathtaking scenes in the world's most beautiful places bolster the heart-stopping action, the real story is the soul-crushing toil the job inflicts on a person who can't trust anyone, whose life is a lie fueled by paranoia. George Clooney's company has bought the film rights with the actor slated to star and produce. 100,000 first printing; author tour. (Mar.)

Jonathan Pearce - Library Journal

Superbly accomplished at both plotting and characterization, Steinhauer, in a change of pace from his series of Eastern European thrillers (e.g., The Bridge of Sights; Victory Square), offers an emotionally damaged protagonist who is an experienced spy or "tourist" but now a family man and desk-bound agent of the post-9/11, scandal-ridden CIA. When Milo Weaver is called back to fieldwork and assigned to capture an international assassin, it sets off an investigation into one of Milo's colleagues. The story is long and complicated but compelling and hard to put down. As is true of the better spy novels, the theme here is betrayal. Forays into blind alleys, puzzling clues, lapses of judgment, narrow escapes, and ingenious attainment of objectives establish Milo as a skilled operative performing difficult tasks while being systematically deceived by compatriots and adversaries. Accepting the contemporary story as potentially realistic, readers are led into hoping that their country's intelligence-gathering leadership is actually in better hands-and performing for less venal reasons-than the novel suggests. Appropriately, this story includes a full measure of cynicism, very little humor, and a tender conclusion. Highly recommended for all public libraries.

Kirkus Reviews

In his latest thriller, Steinhauer (Victory Square, 2007, etc.) ventures into the darkest corners of the CIA and finds the place full of antiheroes. Milo Weaver is a CIA legend, a member in terrific standing of an elite undercover operation known as the Tourists, until, inevitably-no one ever stays a Tourist forever-he runs out of courage. This happens on the streets of Venice during a shootout. He takes a couple of bullets in the chest, survives and recovers and, subsequently, elects to burrow into the bureaucracy. Soon he's spending most of his time jockeying a desk at CIA headquarters in New York. He has a wife and daughter that he adores, and he is content indeed to have come in from the cold. But then, six years later, on a day much like any other, there's the life-altering phone call. It's from his boss, about the Tiger, with whom Milo has long had a special, peculiarly respectful relationship. Ferocious as the animal he's nicknamed for, the Tiger is also maddeningly elusive, but now he seems to be languishing in jail, caught by a small-town sheriff. Milo is dispatched to identify him. And so it begins anew-the perilous, labyrinthine journey replete with unforeseen way stations and a multiplicity of secret agendas, all of them dark, many of them potentially lethal. Milo will find himself a murder suspect. His family will be endangered. Implacable enemies will pursue him, and friends will betray him. In the end, "a strand of Tourist philosophy" will seem to apply-that hope is counterproductive, an illusion. But maybe, just maybe, he'll hope anyway. A little too talky, a little too convoluted to rank among Steinhauer's very best. Still, only le Carre can make a spy as interesting.First printing of 100,000. Film rights to George Clooney's Smokehouse Pictures with Clooney to star and produce

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