Milo Weaver is a "Tourist" for the "Company," an undercover agent for the CIA. And he's a good one. Known as the legendary Charles Alexander, Milo's time in service has exhausted him and suicide is contemplated daily. After an especially tough case in Venice that leaves him shot, Milo decides to say good-bye to his old world and take a desk in New York to start a new life with his new wife, Tina, and their daughter, Stephanie. When an old friend is labeled as a treasonous double agent, Milo has no choice but to clear his friend's name and his own by going back to the undercover life he left six years ago.

I was  looking for a good spy novel that would take me to the many corners of the world and simultaneously keep me on the edge of my seat. The Tourist certainly did that and more and I was pleasantly surprised by it. It's been a little while since I felt like reading a spy novel (you may recall, I was disappointed with Dr. No by Ian Fleming a few months back), so when I picked this one up at the library the other day, I held my breath. I needn't have worried. While I don't think it's a spy novel breaking new ground, it certainly is extremely effective in sweeping the reader up into exotic locales like Venice, France, and Switzerland and there is just the right amount of heart-pumping scenes where you wonder if people are who they really say they are.

My only gripe is (and I'm certain this will sound insensitive, so my apologies in advance) that I was less interested in Milo's family than I probably should have been and was much more content when the pages would move back to the edge-of-your-seats spy scenes. Don't get me wrong, Milo's family provided that needed contrast between the life Milo loves, with the one he is forced to move back into, in order to protect his name and his family, but his wife and daughter just weren't interesting enough for me to be swept away in their stories. I'm hoping that the later novels in the trilogy offer even more depth for them because they both were equally tough characters, and Stephanie was quite the funny, sarcastic child. Milo himself was a thoroughly unique character, and you can't not love a spy who has a slight obsession with French singers from the 1960s.

All in all, The Tourist is a satisfying and intelligent spy-thriller that won't disappoint as the whirlwind travel around the world brings you ultimately back to the United States where Milo must trust the very people that he never thought he would need to in order to clear his name. With family secrets and old Cold War events blending with the new threats of today, Olen Steinhauer's The Tourist is an excellent first in a series that will whet your appetite to get the second installment immediately.

The trilogy in order:

• The Tourist (2009)
• The Nearest Exit (2010)
• The American Spy (2012)

FTC Disclosure: I checked this book out from my local Virginia Beach Public Library.

Publisher: Minotaur Books

Release Date: 2009

Pages: 408

About the Author (from his website)

Olen Steinhauer grew up in Virginia and has lived throughout the US and Europe. He is the author of The Bridge of Sighs, which began a five-book sequence chronicling Cold War Eastern Europe. The Tourist is book one in a trilogy. Steinhauer lives in Hungary with his wife and daughter.

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Who doesn't want a little British spy intelligence and James Bond action to kick off the summer?

Two agents from the British MI5 disappear in Jamaica, and it's up to James Bond to get to the island and figure it out. When his sleuthing uncovers a trail leading right to the elusive and mysterious Dr. No, Bond realizes he might be in a little over his head.

I so wanted to fall down and love this story. I really did. Even after a few days since its conclusion, I'm sort up in the air on this one and would love to get your thoughts.

I think I expected an extremely sophisticated spy-thriller, which would keep me nail-bitingly at the edge of my seat. While it certainly retained all of the key elements to nurture that expectation (and some heartfelt, sad moments to top it off), all in all, it was a story with not much thrill for me, and minus the fun gadgets shown in the films. (Listen, I really, really tried not to let my movie-watching experience taint my perspective of the book itself, but clearly it did and I can't change that initial perception.)

This was my very first time reading/listening to a James Bond story, and I think I would have enjoyed and appreciated this more had I experienced the other stories in the series first. I think it suffices as a standalone, as I wasn't terribly confused by anything, but I think part of the enjoyment of the James Bond franchise is experiencing the evolution of him as an agent to an even more experienced one. After all, in Dr. No, the book starts off with a tad bit of embarrassment for him because he didn't quite execute the previous case successfully, and M, his handler, is annoyed with Bond. That was actually quite intriguing and I enjoyed that the most overall.

When Bond flew to Jamaica to investigate the disappearance of fellow agents, the case leads directly to Dr. No and a section of Jamaica called Crab Key. James Bond's reconnaissance on Crab Key results in meeting Honeychile, an orphaned island woman whose beauty and island intelligence makes her much tougher than Bond expects. I didn't mind this interaction and found it interesting, but again, it wasn't something that made me a James Bond fan.

Overall, while I was disappointed as my expectations were extremely high. I will not shy away from this series, though, and will be trying another James Bond novel again, and will definitely listen to the audio version as Simon Vance completely rocked it.

Audio Notes: For all the overall pieces of the story I didn't like... had it not been for the vocal stylings of Simon Vance, I would have stopped the story and moved on to another one. Simon Vance was impeccably engaging and his voice silkily mastered the James Bond narration. He did a fantastic job with Honeychile and Dr. No as well, and I was riveted by his voice alone. Click here for a sample on Audible.com (click the play button below the cover).

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Release Date: 10/9/06

Audio Time: 7 hours, 13 minutes

Narrator: Simon Vance

Others said:

The Literate Housewife
The Picky Girl

Shaken, Not Stirred Audiobook Challenge Site

About the Author

Author of one of the best-selling fiction thriller series of all time, Ian Fleming was an English journalist and author, and also was a British Intelligence officer! The man was *the* man. I think I might like his biography much more.

Visit the author:

• On his website

This was another selection for Teresa's 2012 Audio Book Challenge.