Not for nothing are reviewers comparing Olen Steinhauer to John le Carré. Both authors write complex, cynical novels of political intrigue featuring an insider’s knowledge of spycraft based either on experience or an amazingly informed imagination. Both began their writing careers with series books. Le Carré broke through to spy superstardom with the standalone The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. (Actually, his series character George Smiley appears in Cold, but is emphatically not its protagonist.) Steinhauer has been edging his way upward with each of his two series’ entries, but his new standalone, a multi-character, multilayered mixture of espionage and human frailty just may be his major game changer.
Set in 2011 after the Tunisia and Egyptian uprisings, it hinges on a supposedly deep-sixed CIA clandestine operation, appropriately called “Stumbler,” that was designed to foment a similar revolution in Libya to remove Gaddafi from power. When American diplomat Emmett Kohl is assassinated in a Budapest restaurant, his connection to Stumbler, along with scattered reports of missing Libyan exiles, suggests the operation is back in play, but perhaps not by the agency. This has a galvanizing effect on most of the novel’s major characters—the CIA’s man in Cairo Stan Bertolli, Jibril Aziz, the humanitarian Libyan-born American analyst who designed the plan, and Omar Halawi, a wily Egyptian intelligence operative who is definitely the smartest guy in the room. The effect Kohl’s death has on his wife Sophie is quite another matter. Only minutes before witnessing his murder, she’d confessed to a one-night affair with Bertolli in Cairo. Steinhauer places Sophie at the center of much of the novel, overcoming the shock of Emmett’s murder, dealing with her guilt because of the affair, drifting off into memories of their past life (some of which, in retrospect, are more political than they seemed at the time). While she struggles to come to grips with his death, the other leads are either racing to stop Stumbler or help it to proceed, mindful of the fact that a very effective assassin is removing players from the game.
Actor Edoardo Ballerini (Ripper Street, Boardwalk Empire) narrates with a surprisingly soft voice, but one with which he effectively expresses emotion and tension. Equally effective is his subtle but distinctive shift in tone and mood to differentiate one character from another. His Sophie, for example, speaks with only a slightly higher pitch than normal, nothing near the usual falsetto, changing it from flat, when reacting to Emmett’s death, to dreamy, when reminiscing. His varied Egyptian accents seem authentic to me (not the best judge) but what’s more important is that Jibril’s conversation is animated and energetic while the older, more experienced Omar sounds weary and deeply cynical. This is the kind of audio one wishes were more prevalent: a fine novel, intelligently performed.
