I was originally putting together a post on my first UK review, over at Shots, where Damien Seaman made himself clear from the unambiguous get-go:





The publicity material for Olen Steinhauer’s The Tourist proclaims the novel ‘a spell-binding, intricate, commercial thriller’. Take away ‘spell-binding’ and ‘intricate’ and that statement becomes true.


And it gets worse from there.



But screw that. Yesterday saw some fresh good news, and I’d rather go into that.



First up is a very nice review in the April issue of Penthouse. Now, for those few of you who have let your subscriptions slip (I’m looking at you, John), this is what they have to say:



Penthouse Review



Now, for the second piece of excellent news it doesn’t hurt to go back to Seaman’s critical review a moment:





If Steinhauer intended to turn in a lazy espionage thriller to break the New York Times bestseller lists, then he’s done pretty well with The Tourist.


Take away ‘lazy’ and that statement becomes true. Because late last night I learned that The Tourist has reached #32 on the extended New York Times bestseller list. The list should be online in a couple days, but I’m already taking away the “Mr.” in my name and replacing it with “New York Times bestselling author.” Consider the change immediate, and permanent.



Time to get loaded.