It does not take long for Milo Weaver, our protagonist known as Charles, to discover that Dawdle has turned, and in so doing has killed the potential informer for whom the money was meant and the CIA’s backup agent. Charles traces him to Venice to the home of a KGB agent. There Charles kills Dawdle, and part of the collateral damage is the death of a young girl the pedophilic KGB agent had acquired.

Thereafter Milo retires the persona of Charles and retires from a "tourist" to become a field agent. He marries and spends the next seven years working for Tom Grainger out of the New York Office. The work is easier, apparently not as disillusional and requires only short jaunts away from home.

This changes when Tom assigns Milo to find the “Tiger” who is in the US. Milo finds him in a Tennessee jail cell and is surprised to find that the “Tiger” set up his arrest so Milo could locate him quickly. The reason…the Tiger has one last request….he wants Milo to find the person who had deliberately infected him with AIDS. The celibate Tiger has reconstructed the time of infection, some six months prior, and believes the jagged edge of a seat in a European cafe had the necessary fluids to transmit the illness to him, and further hints that he believes this was done by the CIA or else someone who would know that as a practicing Christian Scientist he would not seek medical help.

This is probably the least realistic part of the book, in terms of the method of transmitting the disease, and the onset and rapid course of the disease. After the confession, Tiger commits suicide in the cell with Milo watching and Milo finally realizes that Tiger was also very probably ex CIA. His boss Tom sends him this time back to Europe suspecting that Angela is a traitor and soon after Milo interviews her she is murdered. Now Weaver is a suspect and he begins to see the enemy not as Al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups, not as the Russians, but perhaps the CIA itself.

The Tourist is gritty, long on duplicitous action, short on character development and full of choppy scene  segues. Although the plot is incredibly complex and sinuous, the novel is really more about the toll the life of a spy has upon the individual and his family. The toll would not be so high if it were not for the greed, lying, double dealing and back stabbing within the intelligence agencies and the quick and clever ways terrorist or competing spies manipulate these weaknesses to their own advantage.

This novel is reminiscent of the classic spy novel and will definitely appeal to aficionados. If you were one then you should know this author is more comparable to John LeCarre or Len Deighton, rather than Robert Ludlum.

--Thea Davis