The Middleman: A Novel

fans beware : this is not one of his espionage novels . no blame for attempting " a noveIl " .It start well then swiftly turns into a dreary" political thriller " lacking pace and finally in the second half it collapses entirely with dull plodding writing . I admire Steinhauer immensely but this is really a fall from grace Even he confesses " I simply didnt know what i was doing " but was nursed by his editor in completing it : she should have binned it

Olen tried but could not maintain the quality of his Milo Weaver books.

liked it.

I read and enjoyed the first ten novels of Mr. Steinhauer, but not this one. This is a complete departure from his Europian spy novels, this being set 98% in the US and dealing with (gasp!) corruption in the government. I was disappointed to see Mr. Steinhauer's political views not too subtlely revealed, but probably should have guessed his are leftist with no discernible proposed solutions. The plot is convoluted, the characters forgettable, stereotypical and too numerous, and the climax nonexistent. I saw who the culprits were in the first hint, but hoped he would tie the numerous and lengthy spaghetti strands of the story together in a climactic denouement. Instead, it ended up like a deflated disco ball at a beach party with strangers. Don't waste your time.

I have always loved this author's work - I've read all of his books - so of course when Amazon told me this was coming out I signed up it pre-publication. What a mistake. The plot makes little to no sense, the characters are just plain odd, the "leftists" have nothing to do with liberals or progressives and more to do with crazed right-wing militia leaders, their followers are abysmally stupid (that might make sense, actually) and the ending of the book was like an old lemon which had lost all of its juice and had nothing left to give. What a disaster. Sorry Oren! You were such a marvelous action and spy novelist - what happened? In any case, if you're considering buying this one, save your money and buy an earlier Steinhauer novel instead.