The Tourist Olen Steinhauer St. Martin's March 09

The Tourist is the latest novel from Olen Steinhauer. In this stand alone that hints at a series, he introduces Milo Weaver. In his heyday Milo was the CIA's best Tourist. An operative rather than an analyst, a loner. Tourists have no specific country they are assigned to nor a specific agenda to work from. Trouble shooters might be a more descriptive name but this is the CIA and vagueness of definition counts where illegalities might be involved. So, by the nature of his job Milo is a man of many layers. Now a desk man he's in pursuit of an assasin named The Tiger.

As Steinhauer peels away Milo's layers for the reader he adds to the plot by adding complexity to who's hired the Tiger and why. Fast paced stylistically, with plenty of violence and action, The Tourist has lots of strong characters, especially females. It has the spy novel's strong sense of the grey areas of spying. Steinhauer writes as if he's been a CIA insider. If you're looking for a claimant to the throne Steinhauer, with The Tourist, looks to be the likely heir.

Dave Biemann