Customer Reviews

The Tourist

5 star:		(91)
4 star:		(61)
3 star:		(29)
2 star:		(15)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

This is, quite simply, the best spy novel I can remember reading in what must be many decades. Daniel Silva, in comparison, is writing books for middle school kids, and even Alan Furst pales slightly in comparison.

This impeccably structured novel revolves around Milo Weaver and his battles for identity and meaning within the world of "Tourism". Forget digital cameras and souvenirs, however; Weaver and his colleagues travel the world on behalf of a clandestine US intelligence agency, combatting global organized crime, terrorists and other miscellaneous enemies of the United States. We first meet Weaver as a burned out shell of a man, whose soul is being destroyed by what the job demands of him. Its early pages dart back and forth across a six-year-timespan, introducing us to key characters in the drama to follow, from fellow Tourists to his boss Tom Grainger, from the woman he loves and marries to the woman whose investigation into the death of a hired killer Weaver has been hunting, nicknamed the Tiger, threatens to derail his fragile happiness.

Each of those characters is carefully drawn and feels as vivid and 'real' as does Milo himself in his struggle to extricate himself from a trap to implicate him in murder and treason. Who orchestrates that conspiracy, for what reason and how it is resolved is at the heart of the plot. Steinhauer never strikes a false note in his writing or cuts corners in the intricate plot. Early on, as Milo muses about his profession, "the truth was that intelligence work seldom, if ever, ran in straight lines. Facts accumulated, many of them useless, some connecting and then disconnecting." Steinhauer, however, keeps each fact relevant, and carefully scatters clues to the novel's denouement along the path that the reader will follow. Never, however, does the outcome feel inevitable or predictable; nor are the clues so opaque that the reader feels frustrated or irritated.

"Tourism is all about storytelling. After a while you collect too many layers. It's hard to discern story from truth." In Steinhauer's capable hands, his story becomes the truth, to such an extent that when I finally put the book down with a sigh of regret, I almost headed off to Avenue of the Americas in search of Weaver's (fictional) Tourism Department headquarters. And I did download a bunch of 1960s and 1970s chanson of the kind that Weaver listens to obsessively to connect himself to the world of love and family even as he must wage a solitary battle in a much darker universe.

If Amazon allowed us to rate this six stars, I'd award them all to this book. Strongly recommended for anyone who enjoys a novel revolving around puzzles and intrigue, but especially for any fans of spy or suspense novels. A noirish tone complements the novel's plot beautifully. The only folks who won't enjoy this are those with a taste for black and white: heroes vs villains, and nary a trace of nuance. This is a book whose author navigates so deftly between those lines that we realize that while Milo may be a hero to us, we also accept sadly that his wife, Tina, is right to see him as a kind of villain.

A tour de force.

My first thought in reading this book was the characters are too stereotyped. A married CIA agent in a bad marriage, his long suffering wife, his fatherly boss, the bad administrator trying to take over and so on. And of course CIA itself. Why must every CIA agent be in a bad marriage, is it a spy novel rule? There are numerous subplots, and the names to go with them, so that it gets confusing at times to remember is this Russian the good one or the bad one, how about this agent? The subplots often don't seem to add to the story, just to have more subplots. It doesn't help that you read a few paragraphs of a chapter before you realize its either set before or after the last chapter.

The book often reminded me of the show Burn Notice, when the author would say things such as "when you're a spy you learn to look for the exits when you first enter a building". I even found myself using the Burn Notice character, Michael Weston's voice when reading.

My main criticisms are, too much of the book was simply two people talking to each other, for example during an interrogation, to explain or extend or rehash the plot. By the time you get to the last rehash it becomes just brutal to get through as you are on page 400. The ending was about what you would predict, no surprises, no insight. The last interrogation leading to the ending just seems unrealistic. The main antagonist was able to manipulate everyone yet falls for a simple ploy anyone can see through. The ending is an anti-climax, no climax at all.

I'm sorry, but to compare this to John le Carre, like the cover of the book does, seems more publisher's hype than reality.

In the post-Cold War days immediately prior to 9/11, Milo Weaver, a "tourist" for the CIA--an agent without a home base--dealt with issues like finding war criminals, watching émigré Russians living an extravagant style abroad, and looking for three million dollars thought to have been stolen by Frank Dawdle, the CIA station chief in Slovenia. Milo, a failed suicide addicted to Dexedrine, has seen too much violence and crime. Watching a Russian pedophile throw a thirteen-year-old girl off a balcony in Venice, seeing an influential CIA man betray his country, and being shot and nearly killed when that agent is murdered by another "tourist," has just about done him in.

Six years later, Milo is happily married to a woman whose life he saved, with a six year-old stepdaughter who adores him. Though he is no longer a "tourist," he is still working for the CIA, investigating "The Tiger," one of the most vicious killers in the world, an equal-opportunity assassin who has killed, among others, both an influential cleric in the Sudan and the French foreign minister. No one knows for whom he works. When Milo tracks him down, he learns that the Tiger has actually planned their meeting, deliberately leaving a trail for him because he wants to meet him. The Tiger wants Milo to find and kill the man who has commissioned all the international killings--and ultimately, the man who has arranged for the Tiger's own death.

The evolving action reveals much about the internecine squabbles within the CIA, between the CIA and Homeland Security, and between Congressmen and both organizations. The number of betrayals is astonishing, high level agents with personal rather than national agendas, double agents, agents who sell out each other, and trained agents who disappear to assume new identities and freelance on a global scale--for a fee. Homeland Security and the CIA distrust each other, and key information is not shared. Congressmen sometimes run their own investigations, and no one can be trusted.

As this intricately constructed novel moves back and forth in time, the reader must constantly consider several basic issues: Who is the Tiger? Who is Milo? And, finally, is the information that the author provides about these and other characters reliable, or is the author himself acting as a "double agent"? The reader must constantly act as a "tourist" here, accumulating hints but not knowing much definite information about Milo and other main characters until well into the novel. While this involves the reader in the action, the lack of certainty about some characters keeps them (especially Milo), at arm's length. Numerous aliases for important characters occasionally lead to confusion. Still, the novel is exciting as Steinhauer capably unites disparate threads to keep the suspense high and his readers involved. n Mary Whipple

The Bridge of Sighs: A Novel
Liberation Movements

Highly trained special agents called Tourists work out of 4 secret floors on the Ave. of Americas. Tourists are on permanent travel status operating in all populated countries unquestionably carrying out orders whether they are dropping off a package or calling a number with a code word, or exterminating an opponent. Milo, the Tourist in the story finds it harder and harder to cope with the disembodiment of non residency. The longer he is a Tourist the harder it becomes to determine who he can trust. After some time his own employer called The Company is under suspicion. The novel starts out slowly, but soon had me unable to put it down.

An excerpt "All Tourists know the importance of awareness. When you enter a room or a park, you chart the escapes immediately. You take in the potential weapons around you - a chair, ballpoint pen, letter opener, or even the loose low hanging branch on a tree behind Milo's bench. At the same time you consider the faces. Are they aware of you? Or are they feigning a forced ignorance that is the hallmark of other Tourists? Because Tourists are seldom proactive, the best ones bring you to them."

The title states my opinion. I found this book dreary and boring plus full of so many errors it was difficult to read. I did read it to the end hoping it'd improve-- it didn't and it was a relief to send it to archives.

I like spy novels but The Tourist just did not cut it for me. The novel was engaging enough but rather average. It was not a real page turner.

The plot revolves around a rather interesting, odd, but somewhat likable character Milo Weaver. He was a "tourist" in the CIA, or an agent without a home, just kind of wandering around doing what needed to be done for The Agency. Having spent years as an assassin, chasing down those who the CIA wanted chased down, and doing all the dirty work one associates with a down and dirty secret service operative, Milo got strung out and almost strung up. He finally graduates to a desk job, gets married and has an adoptive daughter. Milo is liking the life of a spy with a home, behind a desk, with a family.

Milo's lifelong pursuit, both as a tourist and as a desk jockey, has been chasing down an assassin called "The Tiger." One day he is sent to investigate a report that The Tiger has been captured. But poor Milo, ever the one to blunder into trouble, is set up by The Tiger to chase down his a man who has "killed" him by injecting him with the HIV virus. As the story unravels it turns out that Milo's close friend in the CIA, Angela, has also been chasing the tiger by the tail, but in a way that puts her under suspicion for being a double agent. Milo doesn't believe it and gets further involved as he tries to determine whether or not she is innocent of this charge.

Then the action gets really crazy as Milo is chased by numerous agencies, from within the CIA and without, for actions that are revealed in the book but would be spoilers here. It gets pretty intricate, but never all that interesting. In fact, the most interesting part of the entire novel is when his wife, who knows he is in some secret agency but never quite knows what, gets dragged into his mess and finds out the real truth about his past. All the intrigue and drama, though, is rather bland for a spy novel. And while it's not boilerplate, in fact it is quite unique, it just did not click with this reader as being particularly believable or entertaining.

At the end, well, you will have to read the book to find that out, but suffice it to say that this is set up for another Milo adventure. I'm not so sure I'll be going on it with him, but I may.

I bought this book because somewhere I read that this author had been compared to Le Carre. As a loyal Le Carre fan who has read all of his novels, I am forever looking for something comparable. Well... this was not even close, though the author flatters himself by quoting from Le Carre, apparently wanting us to see parallels where none exist. For starters, this book is chock full of every imaginable spy novel cliche -- spoiler alert here, in case you actually decide to read it -- the big surprise is that all the awful, terrible things here were done by... wait for it... the evil CIA, in cooperation with... an evil Republican senator, in order to ... get the US more oil! Seriously, how many times has this been done? I kept hoping this was just a silly diversion but no, that's the plot. Very fitting that the movie rights would be bought by George Clooney, it's right up his alley.
The book is confusing not because the plot is complicated but because the author seems to get lost in the details. He also seemed unable to come up with an ending so it just kind of runs out of steam. I turned the page expecting to keep reading, but that was it. The book is also poorly edited and has grammatical errors, not to mention incorrect use of Russian names (I know, who cares, but I speak Russian so it bugged me). In short, save your money and re-read an old Le Carre book.

Like several other reviewers, I should point out that I rarely read spy novels, preferring character driven stories. Well, sometimes the lucky reader finds both a darn good story and well drawn characters. So, then, while it took a few pages to get into this book, once hooked, I could hardly put it down. Olen Steinhauer's keen writing skills and clever plot devices will keep the reader guessing until the end of the story. Well, until the end of this book anyway as I'm betting there will be a sequel.

It seems that once a Tourist, always a Tourist. Milo Weaver, the main character in the book had hoped to work at a desk job and live unencumbered with his family but alas it was not to be. He gets dragged back into the intrigue in spite of himself. He did choose to become a Tourist but I still felt some sympathy for Milo. Doubtless few realize what they will be giving up in the long term when they sign on to become spys in their youth. To the novice such a vocation probably sounds exotic and glamorous.

The most compelling aspect of this book IMHO is the human toll such activity takes on the individual and his/her family. Milo tried to keep each from damaging the other but not successfully. This then is a human story; it isn't about high powered technology which only a few understand anyway but is instead about a man driven by his past and by his secrets. I highly recommend the book and look forward to the sequel.

THE TOURIST is a welcome breath of fresh air in an overcrowded genre of post-9/11 spy thrillers. This is not your cookie-cutter CIA vs Al-Qaeda fare, but a well-crafted, and very original, novel. Mr. Steinhauer also created an interesting character in Milo Weaver, although he's not in the same league as, say, Gabriel Allon or Nicholai Hel.

While the book is beautifully written, a few flaws turn an otherwise solid effort into a bit of a letdown. The prose is stylish, but attempts to make it literary sometimes become overly melodramatic or just awkward. One such clanger of a sentence is: "The head raised." Hmmm...

The author thanks his French translator from helping him out, but unfortunately he had no one to fix the Russian. Almost every use of Russian is wrong. Also, the Russian villain named Ugrimov has some lines of dialogue that make him appear more like a cliche'd copy of Count Dracula than a dodgy Russian businessman.

The main issue with THE TOURIST, however, is that the actual plot is not as strong as the novel's core concept and mythology. Milo Weaver has to untangle a conspiracy, but he does it wandering aimlessly and hoping for the best. In the key scene with Ugrimov, the narrative gives away its main plot device: "It was an incredible piece of luck..." Incredible, indeed -- even more so with the author and the protagonist sharing the reader's incredulity. Milo Weaver's luck drives the story on, as those involved in the conspiracy spill the beans too eagerly.

Finally, the ending was too anticlimactic for me. The plot grinds to a pedestrian pace in the last 100 pages -- which comes as a surprise because the book isn't very action-packed and you'd expect it to become a bit more lively towards the end. This is compounded by Milo Weaver virtually disappearing from the novel as other characters try to figure things out. It all works out quite well without too much effort. "This is ridiculous," says Weaver a few pages from the end as he learns how nicely everything fell into place. I could hardly disagree.

Overall, the book frustrates more than it impresses.

THE TOURIST has been summarized amply in other reviews. However, simply because the novel is written in the spy genre and has the familiar tropes of the world weary operative, and nothing seems like it really is, blah blah blah, then clearly Steinhauer must be the new le Carre. Please! There is no underlying theme here -- except perhaps being a spy is a soul killing job. Who knew? John le Carre uses his fiction to write about the real world: Big Pharma using Africa as one big lab in THE CONSTANT GARDNER, for example; or the practice of rendition in A MOST WANTED MAN. In other words, interesting empathatic characters functioning in a real world plot. THE TOURIST is a collection of good research, over the top coincidences, obvious twists, or when the author gets himself in too deep, twists out of nowhere which are blatantly unfair to the reader. Yeah, go ahead and try and manipulate me, but do it on a level playing field. Suffice to say, the book is the Seinfeld of spy novels, ultimately being about nothing at all. Which is fine. But comparing it to masterpieces from John le Carre that transcend genre fiction is just wrong.