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3.63 AVERAGE
3.63 AVERAGE
I love me a good spy story. I am fascinated by espionage - part of my fascination with it is the reality of it. How realistic is the whole spy thing really? I think there is a memoir written by a former CIA, I should find it and read it to satisfy this burning curiosity I have. But I have digressed.
I came across this series because the third book was granted to me as an ARC. That time has come and gone and so I thought I would read the series in order.
Milo Weaver is an operative for a secret department hidden within the CIA. He and a select few are called Tourists and they travel the world meting out justice...from their perspective. It's not a lifestyle that lends itself to family or friends or roots. He is a perpetual traveler. And frankly, he's sick of it. Or he was sick of it. Now he mostly rides a desk at the office in Manhattan and has spent years chasing an assassin who just refuses to be caught. But all that changes when this assassin finds Milo and the intel he shares sends him right back out into the field. But things are different, both in Milo's personal life and in the field and this out-of-the-blue assignment calls into question so much of what Milo thought he knew.
A super entertaining book, enough so that I am definitely picking up the rest of the series. It's not a book or series, I will gush about but not all books need to be that. This feeds my fascination with espionage and is entertaining. That's good enough for me!
I came across this series because the third book was granted to me as an ARC. That time has come and gone and so I thought I would read the series in order.
Milo Weaver is an operative for a secret department hidden within the CIA. He and a select few are called Tourists and they travel the world meting out justice...from their perspective. It's not a lifestyle that lends itself to family or friends or roots. He is a perpetual traveler. And frankly, he's sick of it. Or he was sick of it. Now he mostly rides a desk at the office in Manhattan and has spent years chasing an assassin who just refuses to be caught. But all that changes when this assassin finds Milo and the intel he shares sends him right back out into the field. But things are different, both in Milo's personal life and in the field and this out-of-the-blue assignment calls into question so much of what Milo thought he knew.
A super entertaining book, enough so that I am definitely picking up the rest of the series. It's not a book or series, I will gush about but not all books need to be that. This feeds my fascination with espionage and is entertaining. That's good enough for me!
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
After five, multi-award nominated crime fiction novels, Hungary based, American born novelist Olen Steinhauer has turned his hand to contemporary espionage in THE TOURIST.
The action in this book centres around Milo Weaver - CIA Agent, Tourist, father and husband. Starting out in 2001, Milo, nursing a serious pill-popping addiction and a strong desire to suicide in the line of duty, is in the middle of a botched attempt to stop a hitman. Flash forward 7 years and Milo's got a wife, a child, and a personal interest in tracking down the hitman behind that nearly fatal, and life changing encounter. Out of active duty and in a desk job since then, Milo wasn't expecting the "Tiger" to hand himself over voluntarily. A deathbed conversation with the Tiger turns Milo's perceptions upside down, and set him on a path unexpected.
There are a number of elements in THE TOURIST that stand out. Milo, as a highly flawed, complicated central character in what is after all, an espionage novel, seems very realistic. A man with faults and flaws, he is poignantly aware of his own limitations - particularly when it comes to the ease with which he lives his professional life, compared to the way that he handles the personal. Obviously the situations in which he finds himself are not those which the average person is going to have to deal with, so a certain suspension of disbelief is going to be required on the part of the reader. There are some downsides to this characterisation however, the most notable one being the difficulty of focusing a great sense of moral and personal outrage, when the enemy is a little closer to home than would normally be the case. THE TOURIST gets into interesting territory in this area, a direction I found quite fascinating, but then I prefer the enemy to be less than straightforward. There's also a good sense of pace, with a nice sprinkling of rushing around, without it being too over the top. Mostly, however, there is a very elegant balancing of the tension, and the threat with some nice touches of reality, delivered with some very tongue in cheek humour. (What would be more hairy for your average burnt-out, long term spy - an encounter with a shadowy enemy or Disneyworld. Still can't decide!)
Where THE TOURIST may be slightly less satisfying for some readers is in the area of plot, where things are very busy. Lots of things happen, lots of characters (good and bad) come and go, and there's some question marks frequently on whether or not everything is / could / needs to be connected. Other readers may appreciate exactly this aspect. A spies life doesn't seem like one that would be tidy and neat, with one job wrapped up nicely and the paperwork done, before the next bad situation comes along. I liked the approach, and I particularly liked the way that Milo often had no idea what was happening, as well as me!
The element that ticked the biggest box for me, and the one that made THE TOURIST an interesting book was the portrayal of the mindsets of officialdom. Alongside the concept of the enemy within, perhaps more prevalent than an external threat, this gave considerable pause for thought.
The action in this book centres around Milo Weaver - CIA Agent, Tourist, father and husband. Starting out in 2001, Milo, nursing a serious pill-popping addiction and a strong desire to suicide in the line of duty, is in the middle of a botched attempt to stop a hitman. Flash forward 7 years and Milo's got a wife, a child, and a personal interest in tracking down the hitman behind that nearly fatal, and life changing encounter. Out of active duty and in a desk job since then, Milo wasn't expecting the "Tiger" to hand himself over voluntarily. A deathbed conversation with the Tiger turns Milo's perceptions upside down, and set him on a path unexpected.
There are a number of elements in THE TOURIST that stand out. Milo, as a highly flawed, complicated central character in what is after all, an espionage novel, seems very realistic. A man with faults and flaws, he is poignantly aware of his own limitations - particularly when it comes to the ease with which he lives his professional life, compared to the way that he handles the personal. Obviously the situations in which he finds himself are not those which the average person is going to have to deal with, so a certain suspension of disbelief is going to be required on the part of the reader. There are some downsides to this characterisation however, the most notable one being the difficulty of focusing a great sense of moral and personal outrage, when the enemy is a little closer to home than would normally be the case. THE TOURIST gets into interesting territory in this area, a direction I found quite fascinating, but then I prefer the enemy to be less than straightforward. There's also a good sense of pace, with a nice sprinkling of rushing around, without it being too over the top. Mostly, however, there is a very elegant balancing of the tension, and the threat with some nice touches of reality, delivered with some very tongue in cheek humour. (What would be more hairy for your average burnt-out, long term spy - an encounter with a shadowy enemy or Disneyworld. Still can't decide!)
Where THE TOURIST may be slightly less satisfying for some readers is in the area of plot, where things are very busy. Lots of things happen, lots of characters (good and bad) come and go, and there's some question marks frequently on whether or not everything is / could / needs to be connected. Other readers may appreciate exactly this aspect. A spies life doesn't seem like one that would be tidy and neat, with one job wrapped up nicely and the paperwork done, before the next bad situation comes along. I liked the approach, and I particularly liked the way that Milo often had no idea what was happening, as well as me!
The element that ticked the biggest box for me, and the one that made THE TOURIST an interesting book was the portrayal of the mindsets of officialdom. Alongside the concept of the enemy within, perhaps more prevalent than an external threat, this gave considerable pause for thought.
Meh. I love spy thrillers, but this one was rather too heavy on the plot for me, and not enough action. I didn't really like Milo all that much, and the end didn't really feel resolved for me.
Tourism isn't for amateurs anymore. Milo Weaver works for the CIA and is a Tourist; which is an international spy. If you like spy stories, this is a good read. Chapters are bite sized chunks and the writing is fast paced. It's got all the usual global political machinations that you find in spy novels. Nothing spectacular about this one, but it isn't cliche either.
I normally don't read CIA/Espionage type books, but this has crossed my path a few times over the last couple of years. I think it's a good book, written well,and if I find myself craving another espionage journey, at least now I know an author I enjoyed.
I finished it, which I do not always do. Especially when a novel suffers from the particular problems that this one does.
That being said, I am dissapointed in the book. I have read others by this author, which I enjoyed more. So I expected a bit more out of this one.
As a "spy thriller" it wasn't very thrilling. And though much of the writing is, at least for the first half of the book, dedicated to detailed descriptions of spy-like actions, (beatings, shootings, cloak and dagger), I got the impression that such scenes were in the book because they had to be. It was, after all, a spy novel. Allegedly.
But when the book was not concentrating on these moments, it was either trying too hard to establish the family that the wayward spy protagonist longed to get back to, or otherwise was spending what seemed like interminable amounts of time on dialogue-heavy encounters.
It seems like scores of pages consisted of interrogations by or of one of the characters. Which means rehashing action that has already been established elsewhere, and that has a tendency to bore. A similar problem cropped up with the seemingly endless flashbacks. Some that went back years, others just went back to the beginning of the previous chapter, but from another character's view. That by itself is not bad when not overdone. But not only is it overdone in this novel, we usually learn nothing new when we go back over an event. We get the same facts from a different person.
And there are too many people in a novel with such a complicated plot. Red herrings are a natural part of the genre, but like anything, they can be overdone. They nearly are here, and in fact, even the real "plot" of the spy situation ultimately seems to be a red herring in and of itself, in a book that in the end is more about the personal angst of a spy, than about actually being a spy, or the actions a spy takes while on the job.
The conclusion was a depressing anti-climax which was possible, I thought, only because several characters went quite a great deal against their established personalities in the final third. They did so, it would seem, solely for the purpose of bringing about the previously mentioned anti-climactic, depressing ending.
Violence, depressing endings, red-herrings and some ambiguity are acceptable in their own right within a novel. Certain types of novels anyway. But only if everything leading up to it is expert, and none of the above aspects are overdone. Sadly, in The Tourist, neither is true, as all of these aspects are overdone, seemingly out of context, and not presented in a particularly entertaining way. And certainly not in a thrilling or suspenseful way.
The prose is passable, and allowed me to finish this confusing and miscatergorized ramble. For that reason I give it two stars instead of one. But truly, I got very little out of it. Not even prurient pleasure.
That being said, I am dissapointed in the book. I have read others by this author, which I enjoyed more. So I expected a bit more out of this one.
As a "spy thriller" it wasn't very thrilling. And though much of the writing is, at least for the first half of the book, dedicated to detailed descriptions of spy-like actions, (beatings, shootings, cloak and dagger), I got the impression that such scenes were in the book because they had to be. It was, after all, a spy novel. Allegedly.
But when the book was not concentrating on these moments, it was either trying too hard to establish the family that the wayward spy protagonist longed to get back to, or otherwise was spending what seemed like interminable amounts of time on dialogue-heavy encounters.
It seems like scores of pages consisted of interrogations by or of one of the characters. Which means rehashing action that has already been established elsewhere, and that has a tendency to bore. A similar problem cropped up with the seemingly endless flashbacks. Some that went back years, others just went back to the beginning of the previous chapter, but from another character's view. That by itself is not bad when not overdone. But not only is it overdone in this novel, we usually learn nothing new when we go back over an event. We get the same facts from a different person.
And there are too many people in a novel with such a complicated plot. Red herrings are a natural part of the genre, but like anything, they can be overdone. They nearly are here, and in fact, even the real "plot" of the spy situation ultimately seems to be a red herring in and of itself, in a book that in the end is more about the personal angst of a spy, than about actually being a spy, or the actions a spy takes while on the job.
The conclusion was a depressing anti-climax which was possible, I thought, only because several characters went quite a great deal against their established personalities in the final third. They did so, it would seem, solely for the purpose of bringing about the previously mentioned anti-climactic, depressing ending.
Violence, depressing endings, red-herrings and some ambiguity are acceptable in their own right within a novel. Certain types of novels anyway. But only if everything leading up to it is expert, and none of the above aspects are overdone. Sadly, in The Tourist, neither is true, as all of these aspects are overdone, seemingly out of context, and not presented in a particularly entertaining way. And certainly not in a thrilling or suspenseful way.
The prose is passable, and allowed me to finish this confusing and miscatergorized ramble. For that reason I give it two stars instead of one. But truly, I got very little out of it. Not even prurient pleasure.
This was an excellent contemporary spy novel. It is the first in a series featuring Milo Weaver (followed by "Nearest Exit" and "An American Spy"). This book spans the period from 2001-2007. The book goes back and forth in time covering Weaver's career as a CIA "tourist." Burned out, he takes a desk job with the Company after 9/11 and settles down with a wife and daughter. Then, an assassin he has been researching surfaces in the U.S. and he goes on the road to track him. Events from the past criss-cross with Weaver's current case and he ends up on the run, not sure who to trust. The book is really well written and makes a great post-Cold War spy novel. It's not action-packed like a Ludlum story, but more like something by Le Carre. I can't wait to read the next book in the series.
This was a FANTASTIC book. The best of this genre I've read in awhile. I read it straight through in one day. It moves fast and has many twists and turns.