From the author of New York Times bestseller The Tourist… Six years ago in Vienna, terrorists took over a hundred hostages, and the rescue attempt went terribly wrong. The CIA’s Vienna station was witness to this tragedy, gathering intel from its sources during those tense hours, assimilating facts from the ground and from an agent on the inside. So when it all went wrong, the question had to … wrong, the question had to be asked: Had their agent been compromised, and how?
Two of the CIA’s case officers in Vienna, Henry Pelham and Celia Harrison, were lovers at the time, and on the night of the hostage crisis Celia decided she’d had enough. She left the agency, married and had children, and is now living an ordinary life in the idyllic town of Carmel-by-the-Sea. Henry is still a case officer in Vienna, and has traveled to California to see her one more time, to relive the past, maybe, or to put it behind him once and for all.
But neither of them can forget that long-ago question: Had their agent been compromised? If so, how? Each also wonders what role tonight’s dinner companion might have played in the way the tragedy unfolded six years ago.
All the Old Knives is New York Times bestseller Olen Steinhauer’s most intimate, most cerebral, and most shocking novel to date.
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Out of the blue, six years later, Henry Pelham calls his ex-lover Celia. They meet for dinner in Carmel, CA where she now lives with spouse and two young children. He is still a CIA officer in Vienna (she was also a CIA case officer)
Six years earlier, there was a hostage situation on a plane on the tarmac in Vienna and all hostages died. Who ratted out the agent who was (un)fortunately on the plane? Henry suspects Celia after chasing down other leads. She quit the agency and left him without a word or backward look after the murder of the 100+ hostages that included children.
Told from his view and hers (while they have a dinner in a near empty restaurant), who to believe? What viewpoint is true?
did not find Henry very likable.
Two spies at the end of their careers trying to keep ahead of one another. Very well written….
Riveting. What happened? And who’s to blame? Alfred Hitchcock said, “Everybody’s guilty of something,” and in ALL THE OLD KNIVES that’s certainly how it seems. Sorting it all out was fascinating.
Kind of a “slow burn” but overall good story with an ending that surprised me.
I liked the book. It’s one I’d like to recommend without talking about because I hate spoiling the surprises. It’s interesting that everything happens over one, single evening.
Kept me on the edge of my seat.
My first experience of Olen Steinhauer and a positive one, although he’s no John le Carre. As I was reading this novel, I kept flashing back to the movie “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” from 2005. That story, however, didn’t go into questions about what love is and the morality of helping terrorists in order to save one person.
Henry Pelham works for the CIA at the American Embassy in Vienna, Austria. He’s been tasked to look into inconsistencies surrounding a terrorist incident in 2006 at the Vienna International Airport (Schwechat). It’s now 2012. As a result, he contacts Celia Harrison, now Celia Favreau, who had been on their CIA team at the American Embassy during the incident and his lover. He believes she has the information that will put all the pieces of the puzzle together and bring closure to the investigation, shutting the file on the incident. They agree to meet at a restaurant in Carmel-by-the-Sea, the small town in California where Celia now lives with her retired husband and their two young children. Celia does have vital information regarding the incident, but it isn’t what Henry thinks it is.
With espionage suspense thrillers, nothing is as it seems and no one tells the truth. Steinhauer does something interesting with this story, i.e. he forces two spies to sit down and confront the choices they made, the reasons they made them, and to be honest about it. As expected, it takes nearly three quarters of the book before Henry, the totally self-absorbed, paranoid one, to get real. It takes him until about 10 pages before the end before he realizes that what Celia had really done that gives her the moral high ground. But does he really understand?
This was a very fast read and quite enjoyable. Steinhauer’s prose is straightforward, clear, and precise. He tells the story from alternating points of view: Henry’s and Celia’s. The problem here was that their voices were too similar so it was hard to tell them apart, especially in the last section when he brought the two perspectives together. Deeper character development might have helped distinguish their voices. I did get the sense as I read that I was sinking deeper and deeper into the memories of these two characters. Steinhauer did a good job of manipulating the reader’s emotions relating to the characters and what was going on in the flashbacks. This is the first book in a long time that having so many flashbacks didn’t bother me one bit. The fast pace kept the suspense tense, especially with the flashbacks about the terrorist incident in Vienna. It is interesting that there was a terrorist attack in the Vienna airport in 1985 that Abu Nidal took responsibility/credit for. I was thinking of that attack when I was reading this book also, although that attack and the one Steinhauer describes are two very different incidents that played out much differently.
A wonderful pleasure for me were the scenes in Vienna, Steinhauer’s descriptions of the places in the city he has his characters go. Vienna, due to its location in Europe between east and west, has always been a hotbed for espionage as well as drug smuggling and terrorism. It is an ancient city that blends old with contemporary very well, and offers interesting streets and alleys for clandestine activity. I lived in Vienna for a while and was pleased that the American Embassy remains on Boltzmanngasse in a neighborhood that is a pleasure to wander around, if one is so inclined. It’s easy to imagine spies lurking everywhere in Vienna. I did wonder about Steinhauer’s sources for spy tradecraft because there were two things that Henry did that were terrible tradecraft.
I had fun reading this novel and I think others who enjoy espionage fiction would enjoy it too. But it’s not a novel of big political questions or questions of good and evil as in Le Carre or Silva; rather it’s a novel about two people and their baggage (or not) and how it affects their lives as spies.