This Week’s Must Read: ALL THE OLD KNIVES by Olen Steinhauer

Olen Steinhauer’s new espionage thriller offers up a tasty menu of star-crossed spies, thwarted love and a hearty helping of suspense

The spy who loved me – or not. Can spies who are also lovers ever truly trust each other? After all, it’s hard enough at times to keep faith in your partner, even one who isn’t trained in the art of deception – and when the need arises, murder.

In Olen Steinhauer’s new thriller, knives really become sharpened when CIA operative Henry Pelham, flies from Vienna to Carmel-by-the-Sea to have dinner with former agent, and his some time lover, Celia Favreau. The reason for the rendezvous, we soon realize, has less to do with rekindling romance than uncovering – or covering up – a dangerous secret from the past.

Henry’s assignment is to investigate a possible mole in the Vienna station, where six years before, terrorists hijacked an airplane with over a hundred hostages and the rescue attempt was compromised, ending in tragedy. Could Celia had been the informant? Or is Henry covering his own tracks? All we know is that when the dinner is over, someone will have to pay.