The Printed Page

Title: The Tourist
Author/website(s): Olen Steinhauer
408 pages
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Publication date: March ’09
Genre: Spy thriller/espionage
Review book or pleasure reading: Review book
New-to-me author: Yes
Would I recommend this book: DNF’d @ pg. 128
Would I read more from this author: Don’t think so
Journal notes: Me, its all me. The Tourist is a very readable book. Easy and fast to get into even with re-reading some parts. I was almost a hundred pages in before I realized I was that far. It didn’t seem like I’d read a 100 pages. My problem was I had trouble keeping the players straight. Its a spy/espionage story which leads to code names and cryptic story lines such as who’s following who, feeding information on what to which agent, double-crossing and possibly spying on their own people, being ‘handled’ by the other side, etc. You get the picture but I didn’t. At least not very well. Not enough to follow what was happening. By the time I’d gotten to pg. 128 and re-read the same paragraph five times without the slightest bit of comprehension I knew it time to call it a day and DNF this one. A small point for me – it starts with action then the action dies out and it simply become complicated game playing.

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.

But 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.

The Tourist was provided to me by a publicist at Minotaur Books (unsolicited request). I was not paid and this book is looking for a new home. If you’d like my copy leave a comment. )