Celia used to lie for a living. Henry still does. Can they ever trust each other?

Six years ago, Henry and Celia were lovers and colleagues, working for the CIA station in Vienna, until terrorists hijacked a plane at the airport. A rescue attempt, staged from the inside, went terribly wrong. Everyone on board was killed. That night has continued to haunt all of those involved; for Henry and Celia, it brought to an end their relationship.

Celia decided she'd had enough; she left the agency, married and had children, and is now living an ordinary life in the Californian suburbs. Henry is still a CIA analyst, and has travelled to the US 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 question: had their agent been compromised, and how? And each of them also wonders what role their lunch companion might have played in the way things unfolded...

Milo Weaver is still haunted by his last job. As an expert assassin for the Department of Tourism, an ultra-secret group of super-spooks buried deep in the corridors of the CIA, he fought to keep himself sane in a paranoid and amoral profession. Now, the Department has been destroyed, and with it Weaver's livelihood. Finally he can spend time with his family - without constantly looking over his shoulder and fixing one eye on the exits. Weaver's former boss is not so settled. For Alan Drummond, Tourism was everything. Now, all he wants is to take revenge on the Chinese spymaster that exploded their operations from within. Weaver tries to persuade him to leave sleeping cells lie, but when Drummond disappears from a London hotel room, Weaver is sucked back down into his old life. Soon, Weaver is sifting through secrets, lies and misinformation. If his time as a Tourist has taught him anything, it's that nothing and no-one can be trusted - even within the CIA itself...

Sophie Kohl is living her worst nightmare. Minutes after she confesses to her husband, a mid-level diplomat at the American embassy in Hungary, that she had an affair while they were in Cairo, he is shot in the head and killed.
Stan Bertolli, a Cairo-based CIA agent, has fielded his share of midnight calls. But his heart skips a beat when he hears the voice of the only woman he ever truly loved, calling to ask why her husband has been assassinated.
Omar Halawi has worked in Egyptian intelligence for years, and he knows how to play the game. Foreign agents pass him occasional information, he returns the favor, and everyone's happy. But the murder of a diplomat in Hungary has ripples all the way to Cairo, and Omar must follow the fall-out wherever it leads.
American analyst Jibril Aziz knows more about Stumbler, a covert operation rejected by the CIA, than anyone. So when it appears someone else has obtained a copy of the blueprints, Jibril alone knows the danger it represents.
As these players converge in Cairo in "The Cairo Affair," Olen Steinhauer's masterful manipulations slowly unveil a portrait of a marriage, a jigsaw puzzle of loyalty and betrayal, against a dangerous world of political games where allegiances are never clear and outcomes are never guaranteed.

Praise for the Novels of Olen Steinhauer
"Dazzling . . . a skilled writer working at the top of his form."
"--Publishers Weekly "(starred review) on "Liberation Movements"
"Brano Sev is Steinhauer's most intriguing hero yet, and that's saying something. . . . With its shifting perceptions, pervasive paranoia, and truly unpredictable plot, this will be savored by readers of well-crafted espionage ranging from Alan Furst to John le Carre."
"--Booklist" (starred review) on "36 Yalta Boulevard"
"A wonderfully taut tale that is part police procedural, part political thriller, part love story. . . . Steinhauer has created a vivid world in a lost time."
--"The ""Washington"" Post Book World" on "The Confession"
""The Confession" is a clever reworking of the police procedural: The narrative-within-a-narrative exposes multiple levels of complicity and guilt that make this an affecting, sobering entry in one of the most inventive series around."
"--""Los Angeles"" Times" on "The Confession"
"Think of the savage brilliance of J. Robert Janes's mysteries about World War II France; of the suspenseful erudition of AlanFurst's thrillers. Steinhauer's debut is right up there on those stellar heights, casting new light on relatively recent history we thought we already knew everything about."
"--""Chicago"" Tribune" on "The ""Bridge"" of ""Sighs"

Olen Steinhauer's acclaimed crime series set in Eastern Europe has taken readers from the first shots of the revolution and through the chaos of the 1960s. Now, it is 1975, and one of the People's Militia investigators is bound for Istanbul when his plane is hijacked by Armenian terrorists and explodes in midair.
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 career secret policeman, is hiding the true motives of their investigation, but they can't figure out why until they learn that everything is connected to a seven-year-old murder with far-reaching consequences. The compelling politics and history for which Olen Steinhauer's novels have been praised turn intimate in this ambitious novel.

Praise for "36 Yalta Boulevard" and Olen Steinhauer "A brainy thriller motored by stylishness and brevity. Steinhauer evokes the baroque, bureaucratic nature of the Ministry without choking his readers on it, and he can render it humorous without being satirical. His characters, too, are subtle and biting."
---"Esquire"
"Brano Sev is Steinhauer's most intriguing hero yet, and that's saying something....With its shifting perceptions, pervasive paranoia, and truly unpredictable plot, this will be savored by readers of well-crafted espionage ranging from Alan Furst to John le Carre."
---"Booklist" (starred review) "Steinhauer is a master at entangling a compelling protagonist in a spellbinding web where each broken thread entraps the character (and the reader) in yet another mystery. This is an imaginative, brilliantly plotted espionage thriller, with finely detailed settings and a protagonist of marvelous complexity. Highly recommended."--"Library Journal "(starred review)
"A wonderfully taut tale that is part police procedural, part political thriller, part love story....Steinhauer has created a vivid world in a lost time."
---"Washington"" Post Book World "on" The Confession"
"A mesmerizing and richly atmospheric follow-up to his 2003 debut."
---"Entertainment Weekly" on "The Confession"
""The Confession" is a clever reworking of the police procedural: The narrative-within-a-narrative exposes multiple levels of complicity and guilt that make this an affecting, sobering entry in one of the most inventive series around."
---"Los Angeles"" Times" on "The Confession"

Eastern Europe, 1956: Comrade Inspector Ferenc Kolyeszar, who is a proletariat writer in addition to his job as a state militia homicide detective, is a man on the brink. Estranged from his wife, whom he believes is cheating on him with one of his colleagues, and frustrated by writer's block, Ferenc's attention is focused on his job. But his job is growing increasingly political, something that makes him profoundly uncomfortable.
When Ferenc is asked to look into the disappearance of a party member's wife and learns some unsavory facts about their lives, the absurdity of his position as an employee of the state is suddenly exposed. At the same time, he and his fellow militia officers are pressed into service policing a popular demonstration in the capital, one that Ferenc might rather be participating in. These two situations, coupled with an investigation into the murder of a painter that leads them to a man recently released from the camps, brings Ferenc closer to danger than ever before-from himself, from his superiors, from the capital's shadowy criminal element.
"The Confession" is a fantastic follow-up to Olen Steinhauer's brilliant debut, The Bridge of Sighs, and it guarantees to advance this talented writer on his way to being one of the premiere thriller writers of a generation.

In this auspicious literary crime debut, an inexperienced homicide detective struggles amid the lawlessness of a post-WWII Eastern European city.
It's August, 1948, three years after the Russians "liberated" this small 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, an eager young man who spent the war working on a fishing boat in Finland, finally gets his chance to serve his country, investigating murder for the People's Militia.
The victim in Emil's first case is a state songwriter, but the evidence seems to point toward a political motive. He would like to investigate further, but even in his naivete, he realizes that the police academy never prepared him for this peculiar post-war environment, in which his colleagues are suspicious or silent, where lawlessness and corruption are the rules of the city, and in which he's still expected to investigate a murder. He is truly on his own in this new, dangerous world.
"The Bridge of Sighs" launches a unique series of crime novels featuring a dynamic cast of characters in an ever-evolving landscape, the politically volatile terrain of Eastern Europe in the second half of the 20th century. "The Bridge of Sighs" is a 2004 Edgar Award Nominee for Best First Novel.