The Last Tourist by Olen Steinhauer

Published by Minotaur Books on March 24, 2020

Olen Steinhauer is a Plotmeister. The Last Tourist is set ten years after Steinhauer’s Milo Weaver novels, a trilogy that seemed to set up further adventures involving Weaver and a Chinese spy. Instead, The Last Tourist moves in multiple directions, involving Russians and Boko Haram, before it finally circles back to the Chinese and bounces around Europe. Yet the true villain in this novel isn’t a nation or a terrorist organization, a twist that sets The Last Tourist apart from most other spy thrillers, including the earlier Milo Weaver novels.

Since I read the first three novels only after they were recently rereleased, they were fresh in my mind when I read The Last Tourist. This review might spoil some surprises in the earlier novels, so you might not want to read the full review if you plan to read the earlier Milo Weaver novels before you read The Last Tourist. If you are wondering whether you should read those books before you tackle The Last Tourist, the answer for two reasons is yes. First, because the books are excellent. Second, because it’s necessary to read them to have a full appreciation of the new novel. The Last Tourist arguably stands alone, but it stands on one leg if you haven’t read its supporting structure.

The first and third sections are set in January 2019. Parts of those sections are told from the perspective of a young CIA analyst named Abdul Ghali, a first-generation Sahrawi-American. Ghali has been chosen to make contact with Milo Weaver, who is reported to be in the Western Sahara. Ghali has been told that Weaver is working with the Massive Brigade, a violent left-wing movement that was at the heart of Steinhauer’s The Middleman. At one point, it appears that Ghali was assigned to the job not just because he is Sahwari but because he is expendable. As if usually true in a Steinhauer novel, there is more to the CIA’s choice of Ghali than meets the eye, although the truth in this shadowy world is never quite clear.

Weaver tells his story to Ghali in the second section, which fills in the ten-year gap since the last Milo Weaver novel. Weaver took over his father’s role in the Library, a clandestine organization in the bowels of the United Nations that is funded by Germany and a few countries (like Iceland) that don’t have significant intelligence services of their own. He enlisted the help of his sister Alexandra and former Tourism director Alan Drummond. He tried but failed to enlist former Tourist Leticia Jones, but she nevertheless plays a key role in the story.

From clues provided by Kirill Egerov, a former colleague of Milo’s father who is killed before Milo can meet with him, Milo discovers that a new group of Tourists are conducting strategic assassinations. But the CIA disbanded its Tourism section after nearly all the Tourists were killed. Who are these new upstarts? Answering that question sends Milo on a treacherous journey. In the novel’s third part, Milo and the few helpers he manages to enlist try to use the answers to thwart a scheme that poses a new and credible threat to the free (and not-so-free) world.

Steinhauer keeps a number of balls spinning in the air, challenging the reader to understand how they are connected. They include: pirates who are sinking cargo ships in the Philippine Sea; kidnappings of young girls by the Boko Haram; the death of a dissident blogger in Moscow; a successful communications app with undefeatable encryption; an activist for Massive Brigade who may or may not have a plan to threaten the world’s industrialists during their annual gathering at Davos; and the fate of Erica Schwartz, the alcoholic head of German intelligence who was a prominent character in two of the earlier novels.

Milo is a fascinating character because he comes full circle during the course of the four novels. In the beginning, he is an amoral killer, carrying out assassination without question because the CIA views them as necessary. After seeing the consequences of his work, and after fearing for the lives of his wife and daughter, he comes to believe that implementing foreign policy with a bullet is more harmful than helpful. Or at least, he comes to believe that his own priorities leave no room for a life of violence. By the end of The Last Tourist, Milo has changed again, adding nuance to his understanding of his role in the geopolitical world. He is no longer a remorseless killer, but he is no longer deferring moral decisions to amoral people.

Letitia undergoes a similar transformation. She also starts as a Tourist, then becomes a freelance assassin, then gains a moral sense from her revulsion to the rape and kidnapping of children by Boko Haram. Her new ethics are informed not by a rejection of violence but by a rejection of collateral damage. Even Ghali, who begins as a loyal CIA analyst and ends with a broad understanding of new risks that the world faces — some of them posed by the CIA — undergoes a transformation that compels him to make a difficult and inspiring decision.

Steinhauer is able to cram abundant plot and characterization into The Last Tourist, a novel of ordinary length, by eliminating every word that might be unnecessary. The story is a smart balance of plot development, action, characterization and atmosphere, without a hint of padding. The Last Tourist is every bit as impressive as the trilogy that preceded it, further cementing Steinhauer as the best of America’s current spy novelists.

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An American Spy by Olen Steinhauer

First published by Minotaur Books on March 13, 2012; reissued by Minotaur on March 3, 2020

An American Spy is the last novel in the Tourist trilogy, following The Tourist and The Nearest Exit. It could be read as a standalone, but doing so would deprive the reader of important context. This review includes spoilers concerning the second novel.

The trilogy follows Milo Weaver, who works as a Tourist for a small and very secret unit of the CIA. Tourists run around the world executing American policy by executing people whose interests do not align with American interests as judged by the people in charge of the Tourists. While they make other kinds of mischief, assassination is the key to their game.

Milo’s background — his Russian father is now running a spy agency for the United Nations, an agency so secretive that the United Nations doesn’t even know about it — is developed in The Tourist. In The Nearest Exit, Milo gets a new boss, Alan Drummond, and takes on Chinese spymaster Xin Zhu. Near the novel’s end, Zhu arranges for most of the Tourists to be murdered and for Milo to be shot.

An American Spy begins with Drummond losing his job. Drummond wants revenge against Zhu and would like Milo to join his team. When Milo says no, Drummond goes to London and then disappears. Not long after that, his wife disappears. And not long after that, Milo’s wife and daughter are gone. Milo assumes that they have all been taken by Zhu as a consequence of Drummond’s failed scheme.

Plot twists make An American Spy an engaging read, but the novel’s structure accounts for its success. While always told in the third person, the novel frequently shifts its focus, often backtracking to show events that were first perceived by one character from the perspective of a different character. In that way, the pieces of the jigsaw slowly rearrange to display a new picture, one that evolves as details are added until it becomes something quite different than it first seemed. Judging by Amazon and Goodreads reviews, a number of readers thought the changing perspectives were confusing. I thought they were the novel’s strength.

A German intelligence officer named Erica Schwartz, who plays a central role in The Nearest Exit, furnishes an early perspective in An American Spy. Milo’s sister and three surviving Tourists play important roles in the story (Letitia Jones, who exudes both sexuality and danger, also adds a bit of humor), but the perspective of Xin Zhu is the most interesting. Zhu is playing not only against Drummond and Milo, but against the Chinese government, which may have been infiltrated by an American spy. Zhu’s machinations make him seem invincible, capable of outwitting anyone. With Drummond and Milo apparently at each other’s throats, it seems that Zhu will attain supremacy in the international espionage game. Of course, the reader knows that a final plot twist will come along. The surprising resolution is a delight.

Olen Steinhauer is among the best of a very small number of American writers who consistently produce excellent espionage novels. While An American Spy wraps up the trilogy, it leaves room for the story to continue. Minotaur has reissued the trilogy, staggering the rerelease of each volume, leading up to the publication of a new installment later in March. Fans of spy fiction will welcome the return of Milo Weaver.

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The Nearest Exit by Olen Steinhauer

First published in 2010; reissued by Minotaur Books on February 4, 2020

The Nearest Exit is the second novel in Olen Steinhauer’s Milo Weaver trilogy. The trilogy was recently reissued because a fourth novel will soon be added to the series.

As we learned in The Tourist, Milo does nasty work for a branch of the CIA that few people know exist. Together with the Tourist Agents who research and support their missions, Tourists travel around the world imposing America’s will on foreign entities, usually by killing people the Tourist masterminds have come to dislike.

Milo didn’t seem to have or want much of a future as a Tourist by the time the first novel ended. He wanted to devote himself to his wife and daughter, not to the whims of his agency. When the new boss wants Milo to return, Milo finds he has little choice. Milo begins with some baby assignments but is eventually charged with killing a 15-year-old girl named Adriana Stanescu. Milo wonders if he is being asked to kill a child to prove his loyalty, but having a daughter of his own, he finds a way to circumvent the mission without jeopardizing his career. To achieve that goal, he enlists the help of his father, who is running a little spy operation of his own for the UN, unbeknownst to pretty much everyone except Milo.

Adriana’s eventual fate pits Milo against his boss, his father, and a highly placed German law enforcement agent named Erika Schwartz. Erika is morbidly obese and a serious alcoholic, although she reserves her heaviest drinking for the end of the workday. She’s also astonishingly good at her job, making her the most intriguing supporting character in the book.

Erika has a video of Milo kidnapping Adriana, which turns her into one of Milo’s many adversaries. Adriana’s father is another. But the most formidable of the group is a Chinese spymaster who may or may not have planted a mole among the Tourists — or perhaps among the few Senate aides who are cleared to know about the Tourist program.

The plot combines traditional themes of betrayal with a clever Chinese scheme that has Milo more than once changing his mind about the existence of a mole. By the time the action winds down, things are not looking good for the Tourists. Milo’s future seems particularly bleak, as does his marriage, which has not benefitted from his employer-imposed secretiveness or from his absences from the family as he charges off to make the world safer. Even the CIA-approved marriage counselor has some doubts about Milo’s ability to focus on his family.

Unlike the first novel, the story ends on something of a cliffhanger. That’s not unexpected in a trilogy and, having read the first two, I can’t imagine that any spy fiction fan would forego the pleasure of reading the third installment. The combination of strong plotting, international intrigue, and sharp characterizations enshrine Steinhauer in the top echelon of American spy novelists.

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The Tourist by Olen Steinhauer

First published in 2010; reissued by Minotaur Books on November 7, 2019

The Tourist was first published in 2010. I try to read as many reputably published spy novels as I can find, but 2010 was a bad year in my reading life. Several years later, I read and enjoyed a more recent novel by Olen Steinhauer, but I didn’t make it back to the trilogy that began with The Tourist. Fortunately, Minotaur is reissuing trade paperback editions of the Tourist novels and has made them available for review, presumably to promote the publication of a fourth Tourist novel next year. I am grateful for the opportunity to catch up on some spy novels that I didn’t know I’d missed.

Charles Alexander is an American spy. More specifically, he is a Tourist, a CIA agent who travels abroad and makes deadly mischief (as opposed to the Travel Agents who stay in America to facilitate the Tourists). His real name is not Charles Alexander, but he’s used that name for two years.

Taking a break from pondering suicide, Charles goes to Slovenia in search of a station chief who disappeared with a pile of money. The chief was supposed to give the pile to an informant in exchange for the location of a Bosnian war criminal whose capture would put a feather in the American cap. Charles’ contact, who works for the chief, is Angela Yates. Charles quickly finds evidence suggesting that the station chief, despite his long and loyal service, is both a thief and a murderer. After tracking the station chief to Venice, events take a wrong and violent turn, convincing Charles it is time to change his life.

Six years later, Charles is Milo Weaver, a man with a wife and daughter. He has promised to stay home as much as he can. Milo has been tracking an assassin known as The Tiger, who crossed his path in Venice. An encounter with The Tiger takes a strange turn that causes Milo to be suspected of a crime.

Soon after that meeting, Milo travels to Paris to set up Angela Yates, who might or might not be passing secrets to the Chinese. The plot threads involving Yates, the Chinese, the Tiger, and the Tiger’s client quickly entangle. After some nicely written action scenes, Milo finds discovers that lies he told about his past are disrupting his career and marriage. If help is to arrive, it will come from an unexpected source. By the end of the novel, Milo is something of a mess.

Despite being the opening novel of a trilogy, the story is self-contained. The Tourist combines thoughtful character development with a credible, intriguing plot. The novel moves briskly, not because it is action-filled (although it has some adrenalin-boosting scenes), but because the story and characters are so interesting that the reader is motivated to learn what happens next. In fact, The Tourist motivated me to move on to the second novel of the trilogy, which I will do with pleasure.

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All the Old Knives by Olen Steinhauer

Published by Minotaur Books on March 10, 2015

All the Old Knives tells a compelling story. It is a simpler story than the plots found in many spy novels. The central idea is the traditional fare of spy novels -- a mole in the CIA has given information to the enemy and the reader is challenged to discover the mole's identity -- but the focus of this relatively short novel is on just two characters engaged in an intricate dance, probing each other over a quiet dinner. Having cut away the complexity of plot that often attends such stories, Olen Steinhauer is free to focus on the complexity of two primary characters, each of whom is haunted by the past.

Information received from a Gitmo prisoner in 2012 suggests that a traitor within the American embassy assisted a terrorist attack at the Vienna airport six years earlier. The improbable accusation sends Henry Pelham scurrying off to interview people who might have relevant information, including Celia Favreau, a former lover who left the CIA and is now married with children. Pelham meets her in Carmel, "a perfect place to live if you want to be someone other than you once were." Pelham is prepared to end her life, if necessary.

This sounds like a plot that's been done before but Steinhauer makes it seem fresh. The theme of betrayal is common to books about espionage but the best ones use betrayal to teach a lesson. The lesson here is that betrayal, whether by individuals or governments, will almost always come back around to bite you in the backside. Steinhauer illustrates that lesson in a story that is tight, tense, and convincing. All the Old Knives doesn't have the breadth of the best spy fiction and the ending is a bit weak, but it is nevertheless a worthy read.

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