An American Spy

A Novel

By: Olen Steinhauer

Narrated by: David Pittu

Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins

Publisher's summary

In Olen Steinhauer’s best seller 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.

DAVID PITTU is a two-time Tony Award nominee, as well as the award-winning narrator of countless audiobooks, ranging in genre from young adult (Scholastic’s 39 Clues series) to spy fiction (Olen Steinhauer’s The Last Tourist and Milo Weaver series) to the contemporary fiction of authors such as Jeffrey Eugenides (The Marriage Plot) and Donna Tartt (The Goldfinch) and many more.

Pittu received the Audie Award for Best Male Solo Narration for The Goldfinch, which also received the Audie for Best Literary Fiction.

Not only a veteran theater actor, he works regularly in film and television. He lives in New York City.

©2012 Olen Steinhauer (P)2012 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“Olen Steinhauer’s Milo Weaver novels are must-reads for lovers of the genre.” (The Washington Post)

“Readers are irresistibly drawn into Weaver's dogged struggle to unravel a complicated game of cat and mouse.” (USA Today)

An American Spy

Would you try another book from Olen Steinhauer and/or David Pittu?

Yes, only because I liked others

Would you ever listen to anything by Olen Steinhauer again?

Yes

What does David Pittu bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

If this was not an audio book there is no way I would have finished this book.

Do you think An American Spy needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

I have listened to other books in the series and usually like them but this one took forever to become interesting.. Like 8hrs before the story finally got going.

Any additional comments?

This book is really slow at getting everything set up. The last few hrs were good but it took a long time to get there!

Worthwhile

This book is well written, has an excellent and consistently engaging plot and piles a few more layers of personality on the fictional portrait of Milo. While it does not, of course, have the behind-the-Wall Cold War ambiance of the author's books set in an unspecified Soviet Bloc country, the book brings its own lesser joys of time and place. The author's command of the China setting is not so masterly as is his knowledge of Soviet Bloc countries, perhaps expected inasmuch as he has not lived in China but has lived in a former Soviet Bloc nation.

The narrator is quite competent. My only complaint: the ending seemed to be tied up hastily with some all-too-convenient and not entirely satisfying twists.

Overall: certainly worthwhile. I just wish the author could find some means of defying chronology and writing a couple of more Soviet Bloc/1950's novels. But we must all move on, I suppose.

good story

Would you consider the audio edition of An American Spy to be better than the print version?

irrelevant question audible, if you want a review stop looking for marketing info,
word 14m word 15

What did you like best about this story?

well crafted story line

Did David Pittu do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?

yes, believable accents for the most part, could use a little work on the Italian

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

dumb question

Any additional comments?

can we please get back to a regular review set up, this discourages me from a helpful review to other listeners

Excellent addition to the trilogy

If you could sum up An American Spy in three words, what would they be?

Fun exciting clever

Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?

Yes. Cliffhangers. Steinhauer knows how to keep the story moving.

What about David Pittu’s performance did you like?

Voices - does them all uniquely.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Most of it

Any additional comments?

No

A confusing start, but a good book

I read the first book in this series on a whim. I did not know anything about it. But I was bored with my standard fare and wanted something different.

The first book, The Tourist, focused on Milo Weaver and his desire to leave his job as a black ops spy, but includes a lot of background that does not come out quickly. The second book The Nearest Exit, follows right on the heels of The Tourist, but you are well into the book before you realize that.

An American Spy, again takes you wide afield with characters mentioned in the first two books before you come back to Milo between 1/3 and 1/2 through the book. It is much easier to read these back to back than spread over three years because there are a lot of characters and many of the characters have several aliases, almost everyone has some relationship to someone else and many of those relationships do not come up until the very last minute.

I like spy fiction. And these are the best modern spy fiction books I have read. In a post-cold war world the good guys and bad guys are much less clearly marked. There are real internal struggles of conscience on all sides. And power, more than national interest or ‘moral good’ is the main driver for many of the characters.

Of course I am just projecting, but I think that Steinhauer does a good job of raising the issues that would affect black ops. Too much power corrupts. No one is immune to conscience. What does it really mean to work for the best for people? You get in intelligence out of a sense of patriotism or a desire for adventure. But you stay for power, money, the sense of the game.

At one point a friend of Milo’s has had her place ransacked by the CIA. She is pissed. She said she would have gladly let them look if they had asked. Milo says it does not work that way. No one asks for permission, because they do not know what to do if you say no. So they just assume you will say no. The problem is that that path creates many more problems in the long term. I thought that little half page of dialogue was the essential thesis of the book.

This really is a good series.

Intense!

This book has not gone where I thought it would go at all. I'm here for it though!

Worth the continuation

Writing and story are excellent as expected.

Narrator must be a misogynist though. The women were such unlikable characters, ether cartoon sexpot or whiny and clueless - while the men were simple, ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances and believable. I almost turned it off. If I hadn’t developed a love for Milo and cared about what was to happen I would have. I just stewed every time one of the female characters opened their mouths. Grrrrr

Worthwhile

This book is well written, has an excellent and consistently engaging plot and piles a few more layers of personality on the fictional portrait of Milo. While it does not, of course, have the behind-the-Wall Cold War ambiance of the author's books set in an unspecified Soviet Bloc country, the book brings its own lesser joys of time and place. The author's command of the China setting is not so masterly as is his knowledge of Soviet Bloc countries, perhaps expected inasmuch as he has not lived in China but has lived in a former Soviet Bloc nation.

The narrator is quite competent. My only complaint: the ending seemed to be tied up hastily with some all-too-convenient and not entirely satisfying twists.

Overall: certainly worthwhile. I just wish the author could find some means of defying chronology and writing a couple of more Soviet Bloc/1950's novels. But we must all move on, I suppose.

Slow start picked up as I got to the meat.

I had a hard time following the story at the beginning but things began to fall into place after I got into the book.

Smart Thriller, Unusual Characters, Clever Plot

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

An unusually constructed plot which sometimes gets one lost but is redeemed by a really unique bunch of characters. If you spy novels this is one that goes against the standard linear plot but holds your interest. Compelling narration as well.