Over the years I’ve been reviewing crime fiction I have stayed true to the crime genre with occasional forays into thrillers. I’ve given a miss to spy novels, but I think it is time to bring them in from the cold, especially if the two I’ve just read are anything to go by.

First is The Tourist by Olen Steinhauer. I came across Olen Steinhauer when he published his debut crime novel, the extremely atmospheric The Bridge of Sighs in 2003. It was set in the late 1940s and featured a cop called Emil Brod. Although his next books escaped me, when I read reviews of Steinhauer’s sixth novel, The Tourist, published in 2009 I thought it worth a read. It has taken me a bit of time to do that when I came across a copy in my local library, I realised destiny was speaking.

The Tourist is a contemporary spy thriller that takes as its terrain the internal squabbles in the US security establishment. Post 9/11 the CIA has become a lean and mean machine and their tactics are brutal and often deadly. At least this is the fictional world of the secret services according to Steinhauer, and who is to say he isn’t basing it on reality.

In this completely untrustworthy, unstable world is a man who was once a tourist – a CIA assassin – who is now a desk man with a wife and daughter. How he acquired wife and daughter are an integral part of the story. Milo Weaver wants nothing more than to be let alone but as is the way in spy and crime novels the past always reaches out to wreak havoc in the present. Soon Milo is drawn into a dangerous pursuit where he has no friends and can trust no one.

It’s a harsh tale that has elements of Cold War hangovers, let alone the Russian mafia today but focuses on the conflict inside the US security services. I have to say it had me gripped from the beginning and after each interruption (meals, sleep etc) I couldn’t wait to return to the book.

This taster set up a desire for more. So when I heard that Don Winslow had done a prequel to Trevanian’s Shibumi, I asked for a review copy.

Some quick history: an American academic named Rodney William Whitaker, who died in 2005, wrote a number of novels in various genres under the name Trevanian, Shibumi being a spy novel published in 1979. Winslow – best known for his stylish crime thrillers – was asked to write a novel filling in the early years of Trevanian’s character, Nicholai Hel. The result is Winslow’s Satori.

It’s an excellent and very elegant book set in the early 1950s in China and the Vietnam jungle and has all the hallmarks that Winslow is famous for: plotting that is complex and surprising, a pace that never lets up, and above all fabulous characters. Also his research is dazzling. You can’t do better than get hold of Satori if you’re a spy fanatic.

And while on the subject of Winslow, the paperback version of his 2010 hit, Savages, has just landed on my desk. It is simply gripping. In short a bunch of very cool buddies making a living out of growing dagga in hydroponic tunnels find themselves on the wrong end of the local drug cartel’s interests. You’ll be rooting for the herb farmers through all the horrors that are inflicted upon them. And best of all, Winslow doesn’t duck the ending. I’ll not say any more, read the book.

And then for Jo Nesbo fans here is something special, not another Harry Hole (for which thank goodness) but a standalone that is sophisticated and witty, and so engrossing that once you start you’ll have to finish it in a sitting. You can do this because unlike other Nesbo books it’s not that long. Called Headhunters, it’s about vicious businessmen. In turns both scary and laugh out loud funny, this is a fine spoof of the genre.

And lastly because Peter Temple can’t be ignored, his 2003 novel White Dog – part of his Jack Irish series – has been reissued. Like Winslow, Temple is worth reading for his writing, his characters, and his plots. This one has Jack Irish being led by the nose into trouble and inevitably there are bad cops in the mix.

The Tourist by Olen Steinhauer (HarperCollins)
Satori by Don Winslow (Headline)
Savages by Don Winslow (Arrow)
Headhunters by Jo Nesbo (Harvill Secker)
White Dog by Peter Temple (Quercus)

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