All the Old Knives: A Novel

I will say that this is a book that you should not skim. Many of the professional reviewers have gotten the message wrong by a throwaway line. One word in the ending pages changes everything if you were paying attention to the story at the midpoint, and I am not sure I like that change because most of the readers certainly did not pick up on it. And unfortunately, there would have been a profound scene just right after the book ends where I feel the author cheated us out of the denouement because there is a wage in the end for this. They both knew, and they knew what was going to happen.

“Maybe love is the wrong way to live. Maybe anything that infects good sense is to be shunned.” ‒ from ALL THE OLD KNIVESIn 2006, a Royal Jordanian Airbus carrying 120 passengers and crew is hijacked immediately after it touches down in Vienna by Muslim extremists demanding the release of prisoners held by Germany and Austria. Fortuitously for the CIA’s Vienna outpost, it has a courier aboard that can text knowledge of what’s happening inside the aircraft. Then, the hijackers somehow discover his identity, execute him, and push his body out the door.Now six years later, the CIA is told by a Guantanamo prisoner that the courier was betrayed by someone within the agency’s Vienna office. Henry Pelham, then and now on the CIA’s Vienna depth chart, is assigned the mission to uncover the mole. At the beginning of the story, he’s on his way to Carmel, CA to interview Celia Favreau, an agent runner in the Vienna bureau at the time of the hijacking but now retired from the spy game and married with two kids.ALL THE OLD KNIVES by Olen Steinhauer is a book that should be appreciated by anyone that has enjoyed any of the George Smiley novels by John le Carré. Like those, ALL THE OLD KNIVES isn’t an action thriller by any stretch of the concept, but it has a character driven plot to be relished.Who is the hunter here, and who the hunted?At 294 pages of print large enough for my aging eyes, this was a book I couldn’t put down and finished in less than two days. It would make an excellent original TV miniseries of four to six episodes starring, say, Cate Blanchett and Gary Oldman. Netflix, are you listening?

This is my first Olen Steinhauer title, and he's a very good writer. I'd heard great things about this short novel (novella?), so I gave it a try. It's a good, solid read, and rather unusual for a spy thriller--all the"action" is limited to a conversation at a table in a restaurant where two former spies are having a nostalgic dinner. This man and woman were once colleagues until a scandalously botched op derailed their careers. Or diid it? Nothing is as it seems in this short, suspenseful story. I only knocked off one point from a perfect score because I figured out the surprise ending very early, but I'm not sure everyone will. It's certainly not like any other espionage thrillers I can name. Try it.

Olen Steinhauer, the author, has been compared to the spymaster novelist John LeCarre, and this novel serves that comparison well. This is the best Spy novel I have read in years. My genre is spy novels/police procedurals/mysteries and in forty years I have read most of them. Olen Steinhauer has aced the match.In the forward, we are told by Steinhauer that while watching the 2010, BBC's, Masterpiece TV show 'The Song of Lunch', the germ for this book emerged. The Song of Lunch written by Christopher Reid, is a narrative poem, telling the story of a publishing editor who has lunch with an old flame in a Soho restaurant. It stars Alan Reichman and Emma Thompson, and I can see those two cast in this novel. This novel would make a superb film.Henry Pelham a CIA Field officer, now stationed behind a European desk has come to Carmel, California, to meet his old flame, Celia Harrison. They were lovers, working as CIA operatives in Vienna, and after a most horrific incident in Vienna, she left him high and dry. Celia was the love of Henry's life, and he could not forget her. Someone from Langley has reopened that forgotten Vienna case, and Henry is here to question Celia about her memories of this case. The story is told in alternating chapters, one by Henry and then Celia. Henry gives most of the behind the scenes work as Celia talks about Vienna. We learn about the people they worked with,and where they are now, five years post Vienna.This is a mesmerizing portrait of two ex-lovers, now come together at cross purposes at times. They lay their lives out for us in small increments. All of this takes place in a restaurant in Carmel, with Henry and Celia and one other patron, the only guests. This is riveting stuff, folks. Every twist and turn reveals a little more, but we are not privy to the entire story until all at once everything comes together. Looking back after the final page, I could uncover the clues more fully as they were laid out. This is the best of a spy novel, to keep us on tenterhooks at all times, and the writing is simply superb. The disparity of the past and present has come home to roost.Highly Recommended. prisrob 12-16-14

Virtually a two hander, a pair of old lovers meet for dinner in Carmel by the Sea Ca and talk about the end of their affair and the terrorist event that happened at the same time in Vienna. Elegantly written using flashbacks, verbatim surveillance reports, personal stories and the actual conversation the tale is teased out very entertaingly to an ambivalent end. You know what happened two thirds of the way through but you need to know why and I read the last third in a sitting. Brilliant.

I've long been a fan of Mr Steinhauer and this story (I call it that because it feels like a beefed up short story, hence only 4stars) is well written too. It moves along nicely keeping a balance between the two main protagonists as they each remember (differently) the relationship they had shared in the past. It takes a particular kind of person to be a spy which Henry & Celia both are but a shattering event from their past exposes the deeply buried humanity in at least one of them.

Olen Steinhauer is a great spy writer - this book is smaller in scale than some of his earlier books with a focus on two characters. However no less a great read.

Als Leserin, die intelligente und gut geschriebene Krimis regelrecht verschlingt, bin ich für jeden guten Autorentipp dankbar. Der amerikanische Autor Olen Steinhauer war so ein Tipp, ich glaube aus der monatlichen Krimikolumne einer Tageszeitung. Ich habe seine Milo-Weaver-Trilogie (2009 The Tourist, 2010 The Nearest Exit und 2012 An American Spy) in einem Zug durchgelesen. (Es hat eben manchmal auch sein Gutes, wenn man einen Autoren nicht gleich mit seinem Debüt entdeckt, sondern wie im Leserausch bereits erschienene Bücher hintereinander weg lesen kann :-) ) Vor allem gefällt mir, wie sich persönliche und familiäre Situationen und Probleme vor dem Hintergrund des dreckigen und keineswegs romantisierten Geschäft der Spionage entwickeln. The Cairo Affairs wie auch All the Old KNives finde ich sogar noch spannender. Steinhauers Protagonisten haben was von Jack Bauer und seiner Erkenntnis: "It's a dirty job but someone has to do it."

3.5 starsI have never been a fan of spy novels. This is a short, intriguing story which I enjoyed. It was slow in parts, but with a thrilling ending. It concerns the paranoid world of espionage, counter-espionage and informers on those involved in espionage. The story reminded me of an old saying that it may not really be paranoia if everyone is out to get you. The scene is in an restaurant in an upscale California town. Two ex lovers are having a meal and discussing an incident with a high jacked plane that went terribly wrong when both were lovers and worked together in the Vienna office. There was leaked information which led to the death of everyone on board. The woman resigned, married an older, wealthy man and moved to California and had two children. The man still works for the spy agency in Austria and has been assigned to find out who leaked the information and has come to California to question his ex lover and perhaps still carries the torch for her. They discuss the past, and the events surrounding the tragedy of the plane. Since both are unreliable witnesses, and trained liars, (they were both in the espionage business after all) we don't know how much of their conversations to believe. There are also flashbacks, but how reliable are they? Has anything been proven for certain by the book's end? Will the love affair reignite,or will they remain friends or part as enemies? A great, shocking ending. I see at the end of the novel that the author has written a screen play which has been optioned for a movie. It may be difficult to interpret for the screen, but hope to see it when it is made.

Think of Spy Versus Spy in Mad Magazine. An ex-CIA operative promises, Celia, to meet her ex-lover Henry, a current CIA operative , for dinner several years after quitting the CIA and leaving him abruptly in Austria where they were both stationed. She left him after the highjacking of an airliner where the Middle Eastern terrorists eventually killed everyone, all 120 passengers and crew aboard including nine children. During the course of the meal, they discuss Celia's sudden departure from Austria leaving Henry heartbroken and at a loss to know why she then returned to the U.S. and married so quickly. She has two small children with her husband, Drew, and she makes sure that Henry knows they are her whole life.At the same time as they discussed their own breakup, Henry wanted to know if she had discovered any evidence that there was a mole in the security team when they worked at the Embassy in Austria The team that was working on the highjacked plane case when everything suddenly went wrong. She is reluctant to discuss any old CIA business and holds back the information Henry is seeking.Since the author chose to tell the story first from Henry's side and then from Celia's we the readers have a good idea of what went on before the terrorists kill everyone on the airplane. Both Henry and Celia seem to know something, but they play a cat and mouse game in the most extraordinary manner. Remember I said think Spy VS Spy? Well one was dressed in Black and the other in White and they did terriblethings to each other and you never knew which would come out on top, and who was the bad guy and who was the good guy? That's this story.You have to read it to get the answer. But that won't take long as the book is a short, quick ride.

An interesting premise ... it's reasonably well written and current and plausible. I like a book that keeps you thinking and this one does. It's a fast read, so good for those airplane rides! Opps... spoiler alert... perhaps not airplane rides.

A dark but intriguing story with an ending not to be missed

a new level of great fiction from Steinhauer. Loved the twists and turns in this. Looking forward to more.

Not as good as the Milo Weaver series, the first two books.

Amusing and sufficiently informed on the workings of a spy's world to keep you interested until the end. Will probably make a good movie.

didn't like

a jeux d'esprit . It is short and contains some padding but as ever beautiful artful writing So it is an oasis in the desert of so much bad crime writing and routine plots today where you the reader dont have to do any work . I would have given it five stars but felt a little cheated by the shortness . I also think there is a major fault in the plot but unfairly i can say no more otherwise I would give away the game Read it and lets hope he will soon return to the full length novels .

It took too long to get to the point,an at the end it wasn't even worth it. Boring at times, overall disappointing...