The Nearest Exit: Olen Steinhauer

In The Tourist and The Nearest Exit, Olen Steinhauer tells the story of an organization within the CIA described as the Department of Tourism. These books are part of a trilogy, which ends with An American Spy.

The agents, or "Tourists," are operatives who travel from place to place with no home base and do whatever covert act is requested by their department, no questions asked. Clearly, such agents cannot have a family. They cannot have ties that will affect their ability to act as needed. Milo Weaver has been such an agent and has escaped the job and settled down to a desk job within the organization.

Milo was very good at his job as a Tourist, but he did not enjoy it. At the start of The Nearest Exit, Milo has returned to the job out of necessity.

I enjoy spy fiction in general for its themes of moral ambiguity in the spy's life and work and the inevitable issues of trust. Can a spy ever trust anyone, even those closest to him or her?

I enjoyed The Tourist specifically because of the battle Milo has within himself and with the organization to be able to spend time with his family and settle down to a relatively normal existence. As the second book began, I was disappointed at first because it seemed like the family element had been removed to make way for another thrilling adventure. There are no easy answers, but family, both his wife and child, and his parents, figure very prominently in this story, without impacting the pace of the main plot.

The story is complex and told very well. Milo feels like a very real person, and all the secondary players also have unique personalities that make the story the more convincing.

The trilogy is meant to be read in order, although it is possible you could enjoy this adventure without the background of the first book.

Although the stories are very different, there are some similarities between the Milo Weaver trilogy and the Bernard Samson series by Len Deighton. The Nearest Exit is more of a thriller, in my opinion, but both series have family as a major theme. In the Bernard Samson books, both Samson and his wife Fiona are intelligence officers for British Secret Intelligence Service, and they have two children. Samson's father was an intelligence officer. My review of the 5th and 6th books in the series is here. I have not yet read the final three books of the series.

See another review at Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan.