A TOURIST IN THRILLERLAND
Posted by: Gary Niebuhr
I think there is a danger in being a reviewer for a long time. Rather than sit back and enjoy the ride, the reading experience is shared with note taking and analysis that often spoils the sheer joy of reading. It also means each genre is approached with a list of expectations that must be fulfilled while a certain level of criticism is maintained for repeating the appeal factors that might be the very thing that makes this genre enjoyable to its readership.
This might explain why I have such a challenge when approaching a thriller. The very elements that the authors include to raise my heart rate are often the clichés that make me set a thriller aside as not to my taste in reading. Part of this can be explained by the fact that I place character above all other elements in a book and often in a thriller character is set aside for plot or pacing.
For those who think like me, and for those looking for a great thriller for a book discussion, try Olen Steinhauer’s The Tourist. Steinhauer has been writing a series of books about an unnamed Eastern European country but here he tries the first of a trio of novels about CIA agent Milo Weaver.
“Charles Alexander” is a CIA “tourist,” a man with a well-worn passport from traveling around the world solving the problems of the agency by lethal means. When this book opens, it is September, 2001, and “Charles” is working with fellow agent Angela Yates to rope in a CIA station chief who has disappeared with $3 million. After a bloody shootout, “Charles” ends up in the hospital with the very pregnant Tina and he confesses he is really Milo Weaver, wanting to both marry her and retire from “tourism.” Jumping ahead six years, Milo is working a CIA desk job in New York when a piece of evidence about a renowned assassin drags him back into the field and into the life.
This accomplished espionage novel is a masterful tale of the paranoid. Less about car chases and shootouts, it is a deeply disturbing look at what a person must sacrifice in order to stay the course. Readers who enjoy a protagonist who is an enigma will gravitate to Milo’s compelling story. Book discussion leaders will not have a problem finding topics to discuss in this multifaceted thriller.
