An American Spy

In Olen Steinhauer's bestseller "The Tourist," reluctant CIA agent Milo Weaver uncovered a conspiracy linking the Chinese government to the highest reaches of the American intelligence community, including his own Department of Tourism---the most clandestine department in the Company. The shocking blowback arrived in the Hammett Award--winning "The Nearest Exit" when the Department of Tourism was almost completely wiped out as the result of an even more insidious plot.

Following on the heels of these two spectacular novels comes "An American Spy," Olen Steinhauer's most stunning thriller yet. With only a handful of "tourists"--CIA-trained assassins--left, Weaver would like to move on and use this as an opportunity to regain a normal life, a life focused on his family. His former boss in the CIA, Alan Drummond, can't let it go. When Alan uses one of Milo's compromised aliases to travel to London and then disappears, calling all kinds of attention to his actions, Milo can't help but go in search of him.

Worse still, it's beginning to look as if Tourism's enemies are gearing up for a final, fatal blow.

With "An American Spy," Olen Steinhauer, by far the best espionage writer in a generation, delivers a searing international thriller that will settle once and for all who is pulling the strings and who is being played.

"An American Spy" is one of "The New York Times" Notable Books of 2012.