Olen Steinhauer Books In Order

Ruthenia Quintet Books In Publication Order

  1. The Bridge of Sighs (2003)
  2. The Confession (2004)
  3. 36 Yalta Boulevard (2005)
  4. Liberation Movements (2006)
  5. Victory Square (2007)

Milo Weaver Books In Publication Order

  1. The Tourist (2009)
  2. The Nearest Exit (2010)
  3. An American Spy (2012)
  4. The Last Tourist (2020)

Middleman Books In Publication Order

  1. The Middleman (2018)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. The Cairo Affair (2014)
  2. All the Old Knives (2015)

Short Stories/Novellas In Publication Order

  1. You Know What’s Going On (2011)
  2. On the Lisbon Disaster (2014)
  3. Start-Up (2016)

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Olen Steinhauer Books Overview

The Bridge of Sighs

In this auspicious literary crime debut, an inexperienced homicide detective struggles amid the lawlessness of a post WWII Eastern European city. It’s August, 1948, three years after the Russians ‘liberated’ this small nation from German Occupation. But the Red Army still patrols the capital’s rubble strewn streets, and the ideals of the Revolution are but memories. Twenty two year old Detective Emil Brod, an eager young man who spent the war working on a fishing boat in Finland, finally gets his chance to serve his country, investigating murder for the People’s Militia. The victim in Emil’s first case is a state songwriter, but the evidence seems to point toward a political motive. He would like to investigate further, but even in his naivete, he realizes that the police academy never prepared him for this peculiar post war environment, in which his colleagues are suspicious or silent, where lawlessness and corruption are the rules of the city, and in which he’s still expected to investigate a murder. He is truly on his own in this new, dangerous world. The Bridge of Sighs launches a unique series of crime novels featuring a dynamic cast of characters in an ever evolving landscape, the politically volatile terrain of Eastern Europe in the second half of the 20th century. The Bridge of Sighs is a 2004 Edgar Award Nominee for Best First Novel.

The Confession

Eastern Europe, 1956: Comrade Inspector Ferenc Kolyeszar, who is a proletariat writer in addition to his job as a state militia homicide detective, is a man on the brink. Estranged from his wife, whom he believes is cheating on him with one of his colleagues, and frustrated by writer’s block, Ferenc’s attention is focused on his job. But his job is growing increasingly political, something that makes him profoundly uncomfortable. When Ferenc is asked to look into the disappearance of a party member’s wife and learns some unsavory facts about their lives, the absurdity of his position as an employee of the state is suddenly exposed. At the same time, he and his fellow militia officers are pressed into service policing a popular demonstration in the capital, one that Ferenc might rather be participating in. These two situations, coupled with an investigation into the murder of a painter that leads them to a man recently released from the camps, brings Ferenc closer to danger than ever before from himself, from his superiors, from the capital’s shadowy criminal element. The Confession is a fantastic follow up to Olen Steinhauer’s brilliant debut, The Bridge of Sighs, and it guarantees to advance this talented writer on his way to being one of the premiere thriller writers of a generation.

36 Yalta Boulevard

Olen Steinhauer’s first two novels, The Bridge of Sighs and The Confession, launched an acclaimed literary crime series set in post World War II Eastern Europe. Now he takes his dynamic cast of characters into the shadowy political climate of the 1960s. State Security Officer Brano Sev’s job is to do what his superiors ask, no matter what. Even if that means leaving his post to work the assembly line in a factory, fitting electrical wires into gauges. So when he gets a directive from his old bosses the intimidating men above him at the Ministry of State Security, collectively known for the address of their headquarters on Yalta Boulevard, a windowless building consisting of blind offices and dark cells he follows orders. This time he is to resume his job in State Security and travel to the village of his birth in order to interrogate a potential defector. But when a villager turns up dead shortly after he arrives, Brano is framed for the murder. Again trusting his superiors, he assumes this is part of their plan and allows it to run its course, a decision that leads him into exile in Vienna, where he finally begins to ask questions. The answers in 36 Yalta Boulevard, Olen Steinhauer’s tour de force political thriller, teach Comrade Brano Sev that loyalty to the cause might be the biggest crime of all.

Liberation Movements

Olen Steinhauer’s acclaimed literary crime series set in a fictional country in Eastern Europe began in the heady post World War II era and has taken readers from the first noise of revolution through to the chaos of the 1960s and ’70s. The year is 1975, and one of the People’s Militia homicide investigators is on a plane out of the capital, bound for Istanbul. The plane is hijacked by Armenian terrorists, but before the Turkish authorities can fulfill their demands, the plane explodes in midair. Two investigators Gavra Noukas, a secret policeman, and Katja Drdova, a homicide detective are assigned to the case. Both believe that Brano Sev, their enigmatic superior and himself a career secret policeman, is keeping them in the dark both about the details of the case and all its players and about the true motives of their investigation, but they can’t figure out why. That is, until they learn that everything is connected to a seven year old murder, a seemingly insignificant murder that has had far reaching consequences. The politics and history for which Olen Steinhauer’s novels have been most praised turn intimate and highly compelling in this ambitious new novel.

Victory Square

The revolutionary politics and chaotic history of life inside Olen Steinhauer’s fictionalized Eastern European country have made his literary crime series, with its two Edgar Award nominations along with other critical acclaim, one of today s most acclaimed. Finally having reached the tumultuous 1980s, the series comes full circle as one of the earliest cases of the People s Militia reemerges to torment all of the inspectors, including Emil Brod, now the chief, who was the original detective on the case. His arrest of one of the country s revolutionary leaders in the late 1940s resulted in the politician s conviction and imprisonment, but Emil was too young in those days to understand what it meant to go up against someone so powerful and win. Only now, in 1989, when he is days from retirement and spends more time looking over his shoulder than ahead, does he realize that what he did may get him and others killed.
Told against the backdrop of the crumbling forty year old government with the leaders who were so new in the series debut, The Bridge of Sighs Victory Square is Steinhauer at his best. Once again he masterfully makes crime fiction both personal and political, combining a story of revenge at any cost with a portrait of a country on the brink of collapse.

The Tourist

Milo Weaver used to be a tourist for the CIA an undercover agent with no home, no identity but he’s since retired from the field to become a middle level manager at the CIA s New York headquarters. He s acquired a wife, a daughter, and a brownstone in Brooklyn, and he s tried to leave his old life of secrets and lies behind. However, when the arrest of a long sought after assassin sets off an investigation into one of Milo s oldest colleagues and exposes new layers of intrigue in his old cases, he has no choice but to go back undercover and find out who s holding the strings once and for all.

In The Tourist, Olen Steinhauer twice nominated for an Edgar Award tackles an intricate story of betrayal and manipulation, loyalty and risk in an utterly compelling novel that is both thoroughly modern and yet also reminiscent of the espionage genre s luminaries: Len Deighton, Graham Greene, and John LeCarr .

The Nearest Exit

Milo Weaver has nowhere to turn but back to the CIA in Olen Steinhauer’s brilliant follow up to the New York Times bestselling espionage novel The Tourist The Tourist, Steinhauer s first contemporary novel after his awardwinning historical series, was a runaway hit, spending three weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and garnering rave reviews from critics. Now faced with the end of his quiet, settled life, reluctant spy Milo Weaver has no choice but to turn back to his old job as a tourist. Before he can get back to the CIA s dirty work, he has to prove his loyalty to his new bosses, who know little of Milo s background and less about who is really pulling the strings in the government above the Department of Tourism or in the outside world, which is beginning to believe the legend of its existence. Milo is suddenly in a dangerous position, between right and wrong, between powerful self interested men, between patriots and traitors especially as a man who has nothing left to lose.

An American Spy

In Olen Steinhauer’s bestseller The Tourist, reluctant CIA agent Milo Weaver uncovered a conspiracy linking the Chinese government to the highest reaches of the American intelligence community, including his own Department of Tourism the most clandestine department in the Company. The shocking blowback arrived in the Hammett Award winning The Nearest Exit when the Department of Tourism was almost completely wiped out as the result of an even more insidious plot. Following on the heels of these two spectacular novels comes An American Spy, Olen Steinhauer s most stunning thriller yet. With only a handful of tourists CIA trained assassins left, Weaver would like to move on and use this as an opportunity to regain a normal life, a life focused on his family. His former boss in the CIA, Alan Drummond, can t let it go. When Alan uses one of Milo s compromised aliases to travel to London and then disappears, calling all kinds of attention to his actions, Milo can t help but go in search of him. Worse still, it’s beginning to look as if Tourism’s enemies are gearing up for a final, fatal blow. With An American Spy, Olen Steinhauer, by far the best espionage writer in a generation, delivers a searing international thriller that will settle once and for all who is pulling the strings and who is being played.

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