The Nearest Exit opens with a conspiracy nut and mostly failed American journalist living in Budapest receiving a letter from the deceased former head of the blackest of the black CIA projects, the Office of Tourism, telling him a grand tale and to trust only Milo Weaver. Within 24hr of receiving the letter, Henry Gray has been assaulted and tossed over a balcony only to survive, ending up in a coma. When he recovers, he ditches the hospital and goes into hiding. Seems the Office of Tourism was behind the assassination of a Muslim cleric in Sudan (an underlying plot point in The Tourist) that resulted in massive rioting and innocent deaths on a wide scale.
Milo is doing small jobs back as a Tourist which he does grudgingly, but balks when he is ordered to abduct, kill and dispose of a 15 year old Moldavian girl living with her parents in Germany. The moral ambiguity required to be a Tourist is lost on Milo who is the rare operative with a wife and step daughter, despite that their marriage is a bit strained. He forms a plan to abduct the girl, but keep her safe until he decides how to proceed. Unfortunately, the plans of a Tourist do not routinely go as planned.
Milo has also been ordered to vet a Ukrainian seeking asylum who claims to know of a mole within the Department of Tourism supposedly being run by the Chinese who lost a hold on oil in Sudan after the assassination and resulting riots. If true, the Office of Tourism will be shut down and a vindictive Senator will gladly slam the door shut for good.
Enter an experienced, obese, Riesling-chugging, Snickers-addicted mid level German intelligence operative named Erika. With some dogged investigation, she identifies Milo as the abductor, captures him (under the radar) and using some creative interview techniques finds out enough about the abduction to believe Milo and actually help him out a bit.
The story twists and turns through an almost dizzying array of plots as Milo tries to determine if the mole does indeed exist and why did that 15yo girl end up dead on the side of the road in France. As he thinks he has figured out, Milo quits in disgust and heads to NYC to repair his marriage when during a counseling session, a random word by his wife sends him back to the Office of Tourism, now having reordered some clues leading to different interpretations tying the mole hunt to the death of the girl.
While the Chicago Sun Times says Charlie Stella is "the best crime novelist you are not reading," Stephen King says Steinhauer's The Tourist is "the best spy novel that wasn't written by LeCarre." The Nearest Exit is richly plotted, intricately staged, and elegantly composed and paced. The intertwined plots are complex and confusing, best read in long sittings rather than a few pages at a time. While Steinhauer summarizes plot points from The Tourist, it might be best to read Tourist first to get a real feel for not only the moral damage Milo has suffered, but also the multilayer plotting that is reminiscent of early LeCarre.
A most interesting character is really not even portrayed; the Chinese spy-master pulling strings all over the world. Just why is he after the Office of Tourism? As Steinhauer deftly ties up loose ends, we are hit multiple times with a haymaker that does little to help neatly end the story with every bit of dirt swept out the door - a Steinhauer trait.
As I recall, people go after another government for ideology, greed, or passion. Add revenge to that list . . . and I defy the reader to see just where revenge enters here. That it's so hard to find is a tribute to Steinhauer's skills as a storyteller of complex, layered spy thrillers. Part 3 of the Milo Weaver trilogy will be on my must read list the day it is released.
East Coast Don
Charlie Stella says ... The Tourist was terrific. That Steinhauer guy has some very serious chops. I look forward to this one.
ReplyDeleteLeCarre set the table for espionage writing with The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. Others have tried, but Steinhauer seems to be the closest to that quality of espionage thriller (which is quite different from 'political thrillers' or 'techno thrillers'). Can't wait to see what George Clooney and company do with The Tourist.
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