Henry, a CIA spy, sends an e-mail to his former colleague and lover, Celia, asking her to dinner in Carmel, Calif., where she moved after she left their station in Vienna--and the spook business--to marry and start a family. The two drink wine, reminisce about old times and discuss Celia's children.
So begins Olen Steinhauer's All the Old Knives, but it soon becomes clear Henry isn't making a social call. He wants information from Celia regarding a hostage incident six years earlier at the Vienna airport, which ended with more than a hundred people dead. She tells him what she remembers, after warning him she might get details wrong since she has completely abandoned her former life.
The story shifts back and forth in time, between the dinner and the days surrounding the hostage situation, as well as between Henry's and Celia's points of view. The reader becomes a fly on the wall, wondering who's playing whom and which one, if either, will walk away unscathed.
Though the story unfolds mostly during one dinner conversation, an air of suspense hums throughout because neither spy can be trusted. What will Henry do to Celia after she answers his questions? Is she really as out of the game as she lets on? The truth--and readers' alliances--remain fluid, constantly changing depending on who's telling the story. For a couple of spies, Henry and Celia are a bit slow to recognize some obvious tells, but Knives itself is still a sharp psychological thriller. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd