Olen Steinhauer

The Bridge of Sighs: A Novel

Olen Steinhauer

• 2004 Anthony-Historical nominee
• 2004 Barry-1st Novel nominee
• 2004 Edgar-1st Novel nominee
• 2004 Macavity-1st Novel nominee
• 2003 Historical Dagger shortlist
• Score: 30.54

It’s August, 1948, three years after the Russians “liberated” the 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 finally gets his chance to serve his country, investigating murder for the People’s Militia.

The first victim is a state songwriter, but the facts point to a political motive. Emil would like to investigate further, but his colleagues in Homicide are suspicious or silent: He is on his own in this new, dangerous world.

The Bridge of Sighs launches a unique series of crime novels featuring a cast of characters in an ever-evolving landscape, the politically volatile terrain of Eastern Europe in the second half of the 20th century.

The Tourist

Olen Steinhauer

• 2009 Steel Dagger shortlist
• Score: 6.59

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 LeCarré.

Liberation Movements: A Novel

Olen Steinhauer

• 2007 Edgar–Novel nominee
• Score: 6.57

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.