A French Country Murder

Peter Steiner has thoroughly impressed sophisticated thriller mavens everywhere with his critically acclaimed novels featuring ex-CIA operative Louis Morgon. Now, in what is indubitably Steiner’s finest book to date, Louis attempts to solve a mystery with roots going back as far as World War II.

When Louis purchases a rundown house in Saint-Leon-sur-Dême, he quickly goes to work fixing it up. However, during the renovations, he discovers evidence of a long forgotten crime hidden beneath the floorboards. Unable to leave a good mystery unsolved, he enlists the help of his friend Renard, a French cop, and sets out to discover exactly what happened in this small French village during the Nazi occupation. 

As Louis and Renard search for the answer to a decades-old question, they encounter an unforgettable cast of characters, including Simon, a Jew from Berlin who leads a French resistance cell, a Nazi colonel who is not at all what he seems, and Marie Piano, whose bravery is unmatched. Soon, Louis is pulled into the secrets and lies of the past as he begins to call into question the very nature of guilt and innocence in times of war.

Compelling, arresting, and complex, The Resistance is a thriller that will appeal to fans of John le Carre and Graham Greene.

Jon Loomis’s sharp and witty debut, High Season, starring Detective Frank Coffin, a onetime Baltimore homicide detective who came back to his hometown after one too many grisly crime scenes started to take their toll, was one of The Washington Post’s best mysteries of the year and an editor’s choice title for The New York Times Book Review. Coffin had hoped that the move to Provincetown, Massachusetts, would put an end to his panic attacks, but so far, the quirky Cape Cod tourist town has been every bit as brutal as the big city. Now in Loomis’s winning follow-up, Coffin has to get a grip in order to investigate the murder of one of the town’s most “popular” women.

Beautiful and the heir to a tremendous fortune, Kenji Sole had an active love life---a very active love life. When she’s found stabbed to death on the floor of her bedroom dressed only in a negligee, it’s clear someone very close to her is probably responsible. Since she didn’t care about her many lovers’ marital status, Frank and his partner Officer Lola Winters have their work cut out for them interviewing all of her lovers---not to mention their jealous wives---to find out who killed the much-sought-after Ms. Sole.

With Mating Season, another wry and wickedly suspenseful mystery, Loomis continues to be one of crime fiction’s most promising stars.

In Olen Steinhauer’s bestseller The Tourist, reluctant CIA agent Milo Weaver uncovered a conspiracy linking the Chinese government to the highest reaches of the American intelligence community, including his own Department of Tourism---the most clandestine department in the Company. The shocking blowback arrived in the Hammett Award--winning The Nearest Exit when the Department of Tourism was almost completely wiped out as the result of an even more insidious plot.

Following on the heels of these two spectacular novels comes An American Spy, Olen Steinhauer’s most stunning thriller yet. With only a handful of “tourists”—CIA-trained assassins—left, Weaver would like to move on and use this as an opportunity to regain a normal life, a life focused on his family. His former boss in the CIA, Alan Drummond, can’t let it go. When Alan uses one of Milo’s compromised aliases to travel to London and then disappears, calling all kinds of attention to his actions, Milo can’t help but go in search of him.

Worse still, it's beginning to look as if Tourism's enemies are gearing up for a final, fatal blow.

With An American Spy, Olen Steinhauer, by far the best espionage writer in a generation, delivers a searing international thriller that will settle once and for all who is pulling the strings and who is being played.

An American Spy is one of The New York Times Notable Books of 2012.