Liberation Movements Book

Praise for Olen Steinhauer

"Steinhauer again displays his masterful manipulation of character, plot, and reader expectations. . . . A fast, intriguing read. Highly recommended."

—-Library Journal (starred review) on Liberation Movements

"Steinhauer's people are real, the crimes genuine, and he is telling larger truths about that era, making it unusually accessible."

—-David Halberstam, Los Angeles Times, on 36 Yalta Boulevard

"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 Carré."

—-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

"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

"Think of the savage brilliance of J. Robert Janes's mysteries about World War II France; of the suspenseful erudition of Alan Furst'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

"Time, place, and cast are all richly evoked in a well-written, often gripping debut."

—-Kirkus Reviews (starred review) on The Bridge of Sighs

"With its convincingly treacherous cast of turncoats, opportunists, party hacks, and rogue Russians, The Bridge of Sighs is a richly atmospheric tale of one man's quixotic struggle to decipher the bleak enigma of postwar Eastern Europe."

—-Dan Fesperman, author of The Warlord's Son, on The Bridge of Sighs

Publishers Weekly

Steinhauer's dazzling fourth book in his series about various police and intelligence agents in an unnamed Communist-era Eastern European country gives a large role to Brano Sev, the seriously conflicted spy who starred in the previous entry, 36 Yalta Boulevard (2005). Sev sums up the new book's theme when he says to a younger subordinate, "Intelligence work is precisely what it says it's about intelligence. We are not murderers." There's some irony here: we know that Sev has killed several people himself. But there's also an unexpected note of humanity, as Sev supervises the investigation by two junior agents of a murder in Russian-occupied Prague in 1968 that's later tied to a plane hijacked by Armenian terrorists on its way to Istanbul in 1975. Another new element is the Turkish capital, alive and yeasty compared to the drab, restricted home city of 36 Yalta Boulevard. And the emergence of a major female character a homicide investigator looking for personal justice shows how a skilled writer working at the top of his form can keep a series from faltering. (Aug.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.