All the Old Knives

Starred review from January 5, 2015
A quiet dinner for two in an almost-empty restaurant in Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif., provides the frame for this terrific standalone thriller from Steinhauer (The Cairo Affair). Henry Pelham has arrived from Europe for a meeting with his former lover and CIA colleague, Celia Favreau, now retired and a mother of two, ostensibly to wrap up the “Frankler case.” That’s the code name for an internal investigation into “the 2006 Vienna Airport disaster,” in which a militant Muslim group took a commercial jet hostage—and was apparently “aided by a source within the U.S. embassy.” What is portrayed as a fact-finding evening unfolds into something much more dramatic. Henry still carries a torch for Celia, but their respective memories, and the interrelationships in the Vienna CIA office where they worked, demonstrate how the personal and the professional are so often mixed. There’s great narrative energy in the thrust and counterthrust of the dinner conversation, as well as in the re-creation of the Viennese events; Steinhauer is a very fine writer and an excellent observer of human nature, shrewd about the pleasures and perils of spying. 150,000-copy first printing. Agent: Stephanie Cabot, Gernert Company.

Starred review from February 1, 2015
Two American spies-one retired, one active-dance around what really happened five years earlier during a mission gone horribly wrong. In this masterfully plotted and suspenseful stand-alone, Steinhauer (The Cairo Affair, 2014, etc.) pieces together the details of an event the CIA refers to only as Flughafen (after the German word for airport). Four Islamist extremists, members of the Aslim Taslam group, hijacked a plane at the Vienna airport, and, despite the presence of a low-level operative onboard-a pure coincidence-the takeover ended in tragedy. Five years later, Agent Henry Pelham is conducting an internal investigation (code name "Frankler") into the role the CIA's Vienna office, where he was stationed at the time, played in the events of Flughafen. Complicating an already dicey situation is the fact that his main target is former flame Celia Harrison, who left the agency immediately after the Austrian debacle and moved to California, where she married an older man and had two children. Now Henry and Celia meet for dinner in Carmel-by-the-Sea, a town as innocuous as their conversation is serious. Steinhauer expertly shifts perspectives between the two spies in both their present and past lives, when Henry was a rough-and-tumble field agent and Celia wielded power behind a desk. It's an understatement to say that nothing is as it seems, but even readers well-versed in espionage fiction will be pleasantly surprised by Steinhauer's plot twists and double backs.

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Starred review from January 1, 2015
Henry Pelham flies to Carmel-by-the-Sea for dinner with Celia Favreau, an old flame and former colleague at the CIA station in Vienna. He's hoping to answer a nagging question about Flight 127, a hijacking that ended in the worst way possible on their watchpossibly with help from a mole. To all appearances, Celia has completely left the world of espionage and reinvented herself as a wealthy, doting mom in an exclusive community. But when the narrative switches points of view, we learn that Celia has her own perspective, her own questions, and her own objective, too. Steinhauer was inspired by the BBC/Masterpiece dramatization of Christopher Reid's poem The Song of Lunch and wondered whether he could write a compelling spy story that takes place at a restaurant table. He could, indeed, and My Dinner with Andre this ain't. Readers hooked on the jolt of adrenaline that typically accompanies Steinhauer's intelligent thrillers needn't fear the highfalutin backstory: though this does essentially take place over the course of a single meal, it delivers intrigue, suspense, and a heart-stopping finale. In his acknowledgments, Steinhauer tells us he wrote it in one month. You'll devour it in one night. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Steinhauer's last book, The Cairo Affair (2014), had a six-figure printing and a six-figure promotional budget, too, but this one seems even more likely to broaden his audience.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

Starred review from February 1, 2015

Celia and Henry, once an ardent couple in Vienna almost ready to live together, reunite years later for a "remember when" dinner in Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA. Both CIA agents at the time of their romance, the two had much in common besides their lusty appetites. Celia and Henry also had tricks up their sleeves that came in handy after the affair evaporated under the pressure of a horrific incident in which terrorists took over a passenger jet. Although the agents played different roles in the attempt to rescue the 172 hostages, everyone on board was killed. Discussing the incident at their sentimental supper, the couple pry into their suspicions that the rescue had been compromised, thus leading to shocking consequences. VERDICT This genre-bending spy novel takes Hitchcockian suspense to new heights. Over the course of a meal with flashbacks, the eternal questions of trust, loyalty, and authentic love are deftly dissected. Readers drawn to the story of a loving couple trapped in a terrible embrace will be thrilled to follow Henry and Celia's tortured pas de deux. [See Prepub Alert, 9/22/14; 150,000-copy first printing.]--Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2014

After the failed rescue of a hijacked plane in Vienna leaves everyone on board dead, CIA agents in the city wonder if their colleague on the case had been compromised. Nine years later, two of the agents, former lovers Henry Pelham and Celia Harrison, who has left the agency, meet near Celia's California home to reconsider. Dashiell Hammett Award winner Steinhauer gets a one-day laydown.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2015

Celia and Henry, once an ardent couple in Vienna almost ready to live together, reunite years later for a "remember when" dinner in Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA. Both CIA agents at the time of their romance, the two had much in common besides their lusty appetites. Celia and Henry also had tricks up their sleeves that came in handy after the affair evaporated under the pressure of a horrific incident in which terrorists took over a passenger jet. Although the agents played different roles in the attempt to rescue the 172 hostages, everyone on board was killed. Discussing the incident at their sentimental supper, the couple pry into their suspicions that the rescue had been compromised, thus leading to shocking consequences. VERDICT This genre-bending spy novel takes Hitchcockian suspense to new heights. Over the course of a meal with flashbacks, the eternal questions of trust, loyalty, and authentic love are deftly dissected. Readers drawn to the story of a loving couple trapped in a terrible embrace will be thrilled to follow Henry and Celia's tortured pas de deux. [See Prepub Alert, 9/22/14; 150,000-copy first printing.]--Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 25, 2015
Steinhauer’s new standalone thriller focuses on a couple meeting for lunch at a restaurant in Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif. Henry Pelham and Celia Favreau are former lovers who met as young CIA agents working together in Vienna in 2006, when militant Muslims attacked passengers at that city’s airport. Celia is long retired but Henry is still active, as is his investigation of a report that the terrorists had an information source at the embassy. But has he traveled from Europe to California just to test her memory of dark events, or does he have another motive, like rekindling their long-ago affair? Using flashbacks and smart chitchat, the author offers a tasty mixture of down and dirty spycraft, bittersweet romance, and deception that voice actors Fliakos (handling the Henry chapters) and Kelly (giving voice to Celia’s) serve with flourish. Fliakos’s interpretation of Celia’s speaking voice smoothly fits into his sections, and Kelly easily enacts Henry in her chapters. But in the instances when, for no obvious reason, they suddenly engage in dialogue together, they continue to read the material rather than perform it, with the result that their pacing is off and the conversation sounds forced. Fortunately, these awkward moments are infrequent and fleeting. A St. Martin’s/Minotaur hardcover.