Collected Miscellany

I will be honest.  I am an Olen Steinhauer fan. Have been since I picked up his first book, The Bridge of Sighs, some time ago (and started reading his blog as well).  His crime series set in an unnamed Eastern European country during the Cold War was in my sweet spot as a former grad student with a focus on the Cold War: great writing, interesting characters, an espionage/crime thriller with the Iron Curtain as a backdrop, what’s not to like?

But Steinhauer has put that series to bed and has started a new direction or at least a new series with The Tourist.

Here is the plot as outlined by 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.

This book carried risk and reward. New is exciting but what happens when the author leaves a much loved series behind and starts a new project? Sure, it is still what I like to call a literary thriller, but what if Steinhauer stumbled on his first stand alone?  Made me a little nervous, I will admit.

Another element of pressure, and an opportunity to stumble, was provided by the pre-publication publicity – which has been known to trip me up in the past.  The publicity  put Steinhauer in the pantheon of great spy thriller writers like Le Carre, Deighton, Graham Green, etc. Not an easy label to live up to.

Well, as I noted earlier, I am happy to report that Steinhauer didn’t stumble but merely brought his talents to a different task. I am in no position to label him the next Le Carre etc. but he certainly has tapped into the same vein and talents that kept me reading these type of authors.

The Tourist is a great and thought provoking read for anyone who enjoys the thriller aspects of the espionage genre but prefers better – and more philosophical – writing than your average airport pick up.

More below.

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The New York Times starts its review of The Silent Man by Alex Berenson this way:

A novel can, and should, do many things, but a thriller need do only one. If it thrills, it succeeds, and if it does not, no matter how well it does everything else, it fails. Alex Berenson’s third novel, “The Silent Man,” succeeds in seizing the attention from the start and never letting go until the end.

I might want to argue with the first two sentences, or at least quibble a bit, but I think the review is right when it comes to Berenson’s latest book.

As we have discussed in our reviews of the previous John Wells novels (The Faithful Spy and The Ghost War), John Wells started out with an interesting hook (first Western spy to infiltrate Al Quada, convert to Islam, etc.) but hasn’t much developed beyond all round tough guy super spy.  Not that he is a particularly one dimensional for the genre, just that he is typical of the genre.

What Berenson does well is set up a plausible terrorist attack or military threat and then start the clock on Wells’s attempt to keep it from happening.  As the story plays out the pace quickens and the tension rises.  And Berenson gives the reader the view from all sides; inside and out of the plot – minor and major characters.  In the end you know Wells will save the day, but you don’t know how and how many people will die in between.

This time the focus is on a plot to smuggle a  nuclear bomb into America and detonate it for maxim damage: at the State of the Union address.  Character depth aside, Berenson again delivers an entertaining high stakes action thriller.

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Cover of The Ghost War

You had to think Alex Berenson felt a little pressure on his second book.  The first won an Edgar Award after all and ended with its hero saving New York City from a biological attack.  How to top that?

In The Ghost War Berenson continues the exploits of John Wells while mixing in a little more geopolitical tension.  Here is how Publishers Weekly describes it:

Having foiled an al-Qaeda plot targeting Times Square in 2006’s The Faithful Spy (which won an Edgar Award for best first novel), maverick CIA agent John Wells confronts a very different threat in this pulse-pounding sequel from New York Times reporter Berenson. When the CIA’s efforts to extract Dr. Sung Kwan, a North Korean scientist and an invaluable source on Kim Jong Il’s nuclear ambitions, result in the deaths of Kwan and the rescue team, Wells’s significant other, Jennifer Exley, searches to identify the person in U.S. intelligence who compromised Kwan’s security. Meanwhile, Wells returns to Afghanistan, the scene of much of the action in The Faithful Spy, to find out what outside country has been helping the Taliban reassert itself. While the mole hunt will be familiar to genre buffs and the characters and the perils they face aren’t as nuanced as those in John le Carré or even David Ignatius, the author’s plausible scenario distinguishes this from most spy thrillers.

If the first book was focused on the character of Wells, the second book is propelled more by the looming conflict between China and the US.  It also introduces the stress and strains involved in the relationship between Wells and Exley.

Berenson continues to give you a variety of perspectives as you see the action through the eyes of multiple characters.  As the plot points touched on by PW above reveal, he builds up a series of seemingly unrelated but ultimately interconnected threats and/or plot threads.  North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran, and China all play a part.

But the big picture is China.  The tension builds as Berenson lays out a plausible scenario whereby the US and China could find themselves on the brink of war.

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The Faithful Spy: A Novel

I used to read a great deal of espionage thrillers.  I especially liked a series with a repeating central character.  In high school and college I used to devour them.  I would find an author I liked and read every book they had written.  There was somehing satisfying about being emersed in a series and a character.

These days my tastes are a little more eccelctic and I have a great deal less time.  No more going back and reading a newly discovered author’s backlist from the start.  This bugs me because I am the kind of person who likes to read a series in order for fear of missing some key fact or even just the more nuanced perspective you get from reading every book in a series or even in an author’s career.

But when Alex Berenson’s latest John Wells novel, The Silent Man, arrived at my door I felt like I needed to read the first two books before jumping in.  Thankfully it was only two books and they are quick reads.

Which brings us to the first book in the series, The Faithful Spy, which won the Edgar Award for a first novel in 2007.  If you like “ripped from the headlines” thrillers with a nice blend of action and geopolitical tension then The Faithful Spy is your kind of book.

Despite being firmly in the international/espionage thriller camp, Berenson brings a great deal of plausibility to his plots and depth to his characters.  They are fast and entertaining reads.

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I normally don’t read books this far in advance, but I couldn’t help but read the advance copy of Olen Steinhauer’s The Tourist as soon as I got it in the mail.

The first stand alone work of Olen’s after his Eastern European series, is different but in a good way.  I know hype and blurbs and comparisons can often be misleading and lead to disappointment.  But The Tourist really is in the mold of John le Carre, Graham Greene, and Len Deighton; authors whose books I devoured once I had discovered them.

I will offer a fuller review once the release date gets closer -  I plan on reading it again so I can savor the characters and follow the complex threads more closely – but the book is complex, layered and full of twists and turns.  It is classic Steinhauer: that great mix of literary sensibility mixed with espionage/thriller plot and pace.

So be sure to keep an eye out for this one coming in March 2009.  Keep track of developments, including the movie deal with George Clooney, over at Contemporary Nomad.

Guess what I just got in the mail?  Only the hot new book from one of my favorite authors – due for release in March.

There are some benefits to this book blog.