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.

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.