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⬅️ Previous capture (2021-11-30)
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2021-08-13
Some spoilers, maybe.
Steinhauer's super spy Milo Weaver is back. I remember liking the nuance of Steinhauer's Yalta Boulevard series, but the Tourist series feels a lot more like a Tom Clancy "we do the necessary things that the politicians can't stomach" ideology, which is kind of disappointing. Sure Milo Weaver feels bad about it, but when given the opportunity to stop or even to use his skills to subvert this mission that he is increasingly disillusioned by, he ultimately chooses the latter.
I have also become especially sensitive to the cheap tricks that thriller authors use to maintain tension. My least favorite is when the main character, whose innermost thoughts you have been accessing the entire time, figures out the mystery, but refuses to tell the reader. I don't like this because now you know that everything is going to work out, you just have to figure out how it works out. Finishing the book becomes a trial of suffering through the author's cleverness rather than real suspense.
Two examples that I can think of off the top of my head that do this kind of climax well are Le Carré's /Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy/ and Forsyth's /The Day of the Jackal/. In the former, Smiley doesn't know who his mole is, but figures out how to corner the mole. He lays a trap and the mole is revealed to you and Smiley at the same time. /The Day of the Jackal/ is slightly different, because the question is not "who is the bad guy?" -- you don't really ever learn who the bad guy is -- but "will he succeed in his mission?" And the answer is revealed only at the last possible moment.
/The Nearest Exit/ doesn't really fall into the trap of having Weaver figure it all out before you, and the part where they actually find the mole has echoes of the /Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy/ approach. There are still some weird plot tricks. At first, Weaver determines that actually the mole was a trick being played by Chinese intelligence. And it actually seems like the novel is over at that point: the mole was fake, Weaver is back with his family, the world goes on. Until Weaver randomly realizes that it was all a double cross, and you have to do it all over again. Tedious.
My favorite part was the interlude where we switch to the perspective of a German spy hunting down Milo Weaver. I've always been fascinated with the idea that somewhere a real good guy is hunting down the fake good guy in every Clancy-style thriller, that someone in these worlds actually does think the rule of law supersedes American geopolitical interests. In /The Nearest Exit/ it doesn't turn out quite as I would like, but I appreciated the attempt nonetheless. I would still like to read a thriller told from the perspective of the people who bring the super spies to justice.