The Tourist (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: rocked his head, The Tourist, Olen Steinhauer, Milo Weaver (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Edgar-finalist Steinhauer takes a break from his crime series set in an unnamed Eastern European country under Communist rule (Liberation Movements, etc.) to deliver an outstanding stand-alone, a contemporary spy thriller. Milo Weaver used to be a tourist, one of the CIA's special field agents without a home or a name. Six years after leaving that career, Milo has found a certain amount of satisfaction as a husband and a father and with a desk job at the CIA's New York headquarters. The arrest of an international hit man and a meeting with a former colleague yank Milo back into his old role, from which retirement is never really possible. While plenty of breathtaking scenes in the world's most beautiful places bolster the heart-stopping action, the real story is the soul-crushing toil the job inflicts on a person who can't trust anyone, whose life is a lie fueled by paranoia. George Clooney's company has bought the film rights with the actor slated to star and produce. 100,000 first printing; author tour. (Mar.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Charles Alexander’s soul has been destroyed by his work. A CIA black-ops agent (called a “Tourist”), he is postponing his suicide just long enough to complete one more job. Very early on September 11, 2001, the job goes disastrously wrong. He lives. Six years later, he has become Milo Weaver, still a Company man but now a devoted family man, too. Accused of murdering a colleague—his best friend—he’s forced to go on the run to clear his name. Evidence suggests that the bad guys might share his travel agent. And, as Weaver’s own mysterious past comes into play, his hard-won happiness hangs by a fraying thread. The premise isn’t new, but what’s noteworthy is the way Steinhauer manages to push the genre’s darker aspects to the extreme—his hero’s alienation is part of the cost of carrying out orders whose true origins and ultimate effects are often unknowable—without sacrificing the propulsive forward momentum on which a spy story depends. And Weaver, smart but sometimes not smart enough, is the perfect hero for such a richly nuanced tale. Steinhauer’s excellent Eastern European quintet (Victory Square, 2007) didn’t make him the star he deserves to be, and his publisher is banking on this one to do the job. They’re making comparisons to the classic spy novels of le Carré, Greene, and Deighton—heavy hype, but it’s largely justified. --Keir Graff

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books; 1 edition (March 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312369727
• ISBN-13: 978-0312369729
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (137 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #37,645 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fast-paced, fun reading :), April 8, 2009

By	yogagirl "grrrl" (chicago) - See all my reviews

(What's this?)

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."

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "It was a miserable job; it was a miserable life.", March 25, 2009

By	Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

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

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Rather Bland But Interesting Enough Spy Novel, May 26, 2009

By	C. Baker "[e-mail]" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

(What's this?)

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, Tina, 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.