The Cairo Affair, Steinhauer - B -

                                              I  became a fan of Olen Steinhauer quite some time ago, when I read his series of historical novels set in a mythical eastern European country.  The first took place  in the 1940's and, there was one for each decade through the fall of the Berlin Wall. He fantastically portrayed the desperation of life behind the Iron Curtain. My recollection is that the books were sort of a combo police procedural/thriller/spy series.  He went straight spy/thriller with his Milo Weaver trilogy.  Those books lead to the inevitable John Le Carre comparisons, but it occurred to me after about 100 pages of this book that at least with Le Carre, you have some sense of where you are headed a fourth of the way through. Not here. A Libyan-born CIA analyst, Jibril, asks to make an off-the-books trip to Libya. On his way there, he meets with a CIA agent, Emmett, in Budapest.  Emmett is gunned down soon thereafter.  Libya is on the brink of the Revolution and Jibril is murdered shortly after crossing the border from Egypt.  The first death was clearly part of whatever is going on; the second may have been due to the random violence overwhelming the country, or maybe not.  The connection is a CIA plan, Stumbler, to replace Quadaffi with Libyan exiles.  Is the CIA implementing Stumbler?  Perhaps the CIA is only appearing to?  Is it the Egyptians? They purchased Stumbler from Emmett's bored and unfaithful wife, Sophie. How do the Serbs fit in? It was their agent, Zora, who approached Sophie.  Maybe, Libya is trying to take out the exiles? Perhaps, with help from a rogue Egyptian?  It's all eventually resolved and settled - in Cairo.
                                            Interestingly, the Times published two different reviews nine days apart.  Janet Maslin, a Times staffer, acknowledged that the plot of the last Milo Weaver book bordered on the "impenetrable", but she liked this book even if it was a bit complex.  The second review was by the author of 'The Good Lord Bird', a National Book Award winner commented on here earlier this year.  James McBride said, "The book becomes more of a guessing game or puzzle and less of a story, and then it's time to reach for the remote."  He follows up by suggesting  it is "..a work that will surely have his fans clamoring for more -- and the rest of us trying to figure out a nice way to reach for the bar bill and exit."  I'm in McBride's corner. That said, I'm sure I'll pre-order the follow-up.