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Book Nook: All the Old Knives, by Olen Steinhauer

Olen Steinhauer is my favorite writer of espionage novels. There, I said it. His "Tourist" series featuring Milo, his reluctant spy has catapulted the author to the front of the queue. He has no peers in my view. Sorry, Daniel Silva.

His latest effort "All the Old Knives" is deceptively simple and fiendishly clever. The author got the idea for the story from a TV show that he saw. That program had been inspired by a poem. A man and a woman, former lovers and former colleagues in the espionage game get together for a dinner at a restaurant in California. They had once worked together in Vienna. She has retired, gotten married, and lives quietly now with her family in California. He is still working as a spy and has flown in from Austria.

Most of the story takes place in the restaurant over the course of their meal together. The menu that night contains a few surprises.

Vick Mickunas introduced the Book Nook author interview program for WYSO in 1994. Over the years he has produced more than 1500 interviews with writers, musicians, poets, politicians, and celebrities. Listen to the Book Nook with Vick Mickunas for intimate conversations about books with the writers who create them. Vick Mickunas reviews books for the Dayton Daily News and the Springfield News Sun.