All the Old Knives - Softcover

Steinhauer, Olen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1250045436 ISBN 13: 9781250045430

Publisher: Picador Paper, 2015

Synopsis

From the author of New York Times bestseller The Tourist...

Six years ago in Vienna, terrorists took over a hundred hostages, and the rescue attempt went terribly wrong. The CIA's Vienna station gathered intel during those tense hours, assimilating facts from the ground and from an agent on the inside. So when it all went wrong, the question had to be asked: Had their agent been compromised, and how?

Two of the CIA's case officers in Vienna, Henry Pelham and Celia Harrison, were lovers at the time, and on the night of the hostage crisis Celia decided she'd had enough. She left the agency, married and had children, and now lives in idyllic Carmel-by-the-Sea. Henry is still a case officer in Vienna, and has traveled to California to see her one more time, to relive the past, maybe, or to put it behind him once and for all.
But neither of them can forget that long-ago question: Had their agent been compromised? If so, how? Each also wonders what role tonight's dinner companion might have played in the way the tragedy unfolded six years ago.

All the Old Knives is New York Times bestseller Olen Steinhauer's most intimate, most cerebral, and most shocking novel to date.

About this title

Review:

An Amazon Best Book of the Month for March 2015: All the Old Knives has a disarmingly quiet start, but good spy novels are like good spies: they draw you in, earn your trust, and then grab hold with both hands. In Vienna during the mid-2000s Henry and Celia were intelligence agents and lovers who witnessed a terrorist hijacking as it took a shocking turn. Five years later, the two meet over dinner at a restaurant in Carmel-by-the-Sea where Celia now lives as a civilian, to recall the events of the past. As the remembrances overlap with the present moment, tension mounts and questions of who did what to whom, and why, become increasingly urgent. By the last 100 pages Steinhauer’s hook is firmly embedded and it’s hard not to race to the finish. And the ending? I can sum it up in one word--brilliant. – Seira Wilson

About the Author:

OLEN STEINHAUER, the New York Times bestselling author of ten previous novels including The Tourist, is a Dashiell Hammett Award winner, a two-time Edgar award finalist, and has also been shortlisted for the Anthony, the Macavity, the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, and the Barry awards. Raised in Virginia, he lives in New York and Budapest, Hungary. Visit OlenSteinhauer.com.

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador Paper
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1250045436
• ISBN 13: 9781250045430
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336