Murder in the city of spies

Eastern Europe, 1966: Brano Sev, a major in the Ministry of State Security, has returned home in disgrace from a posting to Vienna. Charged with treason, he is lucky to escape execution.

The possibility of redemption beckons when Sev's former boss asks him to travel to the village of his birth to investigte a defector to the West who has inexplicably returned home. When a man turns up dead shortly after his arrival and Sev is framed for the murder, he assumes this is part of a covert plan devised by his bosses. But when the plan leads the exile in Vienna, a city teeming with expatriates and spies, where betrayal lurks at every turn, Sev finally begins to ask questions.

The Vienna Assignment is a powerful, atmospheric thriller which perfectly captures the paranoia of Cold War Europe and the terrible dangers facing a man caught up in a deadly game of bluff and double-bluff - a game where loyalty to the cause may be the biggest crime of all.

"A powerful, thought-provoking literary thriller in the mould of Philip Kerr's Berling Noir trilogy." - Daily Telegraph

"Think of the suspended erudition of Alan Furst's thrillers. Steinhauer's debut is right up there on those stellar heights, casting new light on relatively recent history we thought we already knew everything about." - Chicago Tribune

Bleak and uncompromising, this powerful novel grips from beginning to end." - Sunday Telegraph

Olen Steinhauer grew up in Virginia, and has lived in Georgia, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Texas, California, Massachesetts, and New York. Outside the US, he's lived in Croatia (when it was called Yugoslavia), the Czech Republic, Italy and now Hungary. Having worked as a dish-washer, librarian, assembly-line worker, and English teacher, he was inspired to write his Eastern European series while on a Fullbright Fellowship in Romania. He now lives in Budapest.