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.