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)

Hard to follow

Perhaps it’s my unfamiliarity with Chinese names, but I could not follow this plot. I enjoyed the first one, but this was tedious.

only reason I finished this book is because it was

glad this was an audio book. plot was just coherent. the multi vantage take helped the flow, but it was hard to keep the story line. I probably will not read another book from this author.

Read more than once

Steinhauer is quite simply the best for today’s complex transnational conditions. Reading once is not enough to grasp his breadth and deprh

Excellent Performance

I was easily able to follow which character was speaking, even all the Chinese characters.

too hard to follow

there were too many names to try to member. I did not finish the book

Don't do it!

The plot is so unbelievable it borders on the idiotic. Wish I could get a refund.

a drag

What would have made An American Spy better?

I really dont know.

What was most disappointing about Olen Steinhauer’s story?

I never finished it

What character would you cut from An American Spy?

I never was sure who the characters were.

Any additional comments?

To many oriental persons whose names are hard to keep track of and before long I was not sure who they were, etc.

Never again

Horrible stochastic plot. No sense of progression. No beginning. All middle. No end.
Confusing. Long winded passages to nowhere. Shallow character development.
I can’t imagine a positive comment in review.
“Glad it’s over”!!

Disappointing and Totally Unsatisfying

I am a big fan of espionage and spy novels. I have listened to the first two in this trilogy (a must if you want to understand this book at all). After spending lots of time developing key characters in the first two books there is almost nothing in this book. Spoiler alert: Milo plays almost no role in this story. He is a pawn moved around having very little influence over the story - he is not a key player in any way. All the time in Nearest Exit working on his marriage, and there is nothing in this novel nor at the end of the novel. Sure we know they are still together but the pieces don't fit .. we just jump over history of their marriage which was central to the first 2 books and important to Milo in this one but with no substance. The ending - well the book just ends. Story lines aren't wrapped up they are alluded to. I persevered through Part 1 waiting and hoping to return to more of Milo, Allen, Milo's father ... but it never came. Read/listen to the first two books, don't bother with this one.

Could Anything Be More Boring Than This?

What would have made An American Spy better?

Better narration, plot, believable characters. Interesting characters.

Would you ever listen to anything by Olen Steinhauer again?

Never. Ever.

What didn’t you like about David Pittu’s performance?

It was grating, his voice is very nasal and the accents seemed affected. The voice bordered on monotone, the worst possible trait for reading aloud.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from An American Spy?

I don't have that much time, even in my imagination. Besides, what happens when you cut off a person's arms, legs, and head? The same would happen to this story--- get rid of the slow bits and there's nothing left.

Any additional comments?

This is the perfect marriage of a book that should not be read aloud and a voice that should not be reading aloud. I gave up after part 1.