The Cairo Affair by Olen Steinhauer

I do love it when one of my power rotation authors comes out with a new book - especially when they really deliver, like this one.

Budapest, 2011. Emmett Kohl, a mid-level career diplomat, and his wife Sophie are in a restaurant when Emmett starts to confront Sophie about an affair she had during his last assignment in Cairo. The conversation hasn't gone too far when this Albanian bull of a man walks up, calls Emmett by name and then puts 2 bullets in Emmett's head.

The assassination of a nothing diplomat starts a chain of events that stretches from Budapest to Cairo, Munich, Frankfort, Libya, the former Yugoslavia; even Langley and Alexandria, VA.

It's right after the Arab Spring uprising in Egypt and any mid-management and above bureaucrat in government is worried about their future, especially those in security. Around 2005, a young Libyan-born CIA analyst named Jabril proposed a plan (Stumbler) to destabilize Libya and get rid of Gadhafi. It began with the kidnapping of exiled revolutionaries, organizing the various factions into one and insert them back into Libya and get busy. But the CIA said no and the plan ended in a folder. In 2011, Jabril notices scattered news reports of kidnapped Libyans around Europe and thinks someone has co-opted his plan and put it into motion. He heads for Cairo to go overland to the border with Libya to see if and how his plan is going. He actually thinks that someone stole the plan and that the CIA is going to try and ride its back to Gadhafi's demise and take credit when Jabril knows the only way for regime change is from within, not from the CIA.

Instead of accompanying Emmett's body back to Boston, Sophie goes to Cairo to see her old flame in an attempt to get information about Emmett's murder.

And this is where Steinhauer is without peer.

This exotic world is littered with governmental agents from across the globe watching each other, on their own side or not. Spies from a couple Egyptian security bureaus, the US embassy attaches (code word for CIA), Hungary, Croatia, and more are playing the 'perhaps', 'what if', 'maybe', 'could be' game with who has what information and what's happening with said information and just how does it related back to a weeklong visit to Yugoslavia in 1991 by newlyweds Kohl just as that country was splitting at the seams. The cynicism of the agents contrasts with the optimism of the Arab Spring. The  problem is that there "could be no new world . . . because the people who filled it would be the same ones as yesterday."

This standalone (I think) book is not part of a hell-bent-for-leather ball buster series like Vince Flynn's Mitch Rapp. After Emmett is killed, the only 'action' is a brief ambush on the Egypt-Libyan border. Other than that, it's all about trying to peel the onion to get to the ultimate truth behind Emmett's murder, Stumbler, and who knew what, when, where, and why about the flickering connections. Steinhauer cleverly tells the story from the viewpoint of the various main characters that shift forward or back in time so that connections are seen once something is repeated, but seen in a different light. Could be confusing to the reader if from a writer with lesser skills, but Steinhauer never faltered and never lost me as he told this convoluted tale that covers only about a week or 10 days.

LeCarre and Graham Greene carried the espionage banner for years. Following up his Tourist series, Steinhauer has demonstrated he really does need to be considered alongside those 2 greats.

ECD