Criminal Element Book Club, Week 7: We Voted On Your Questions + Early Copies of The Last Tourist

Thank you again to everyone who participated in our Q&A with Olen Steinhauer. We were thrilled with all of your questions, and we tried to choose 10 of them that Olen will answer next week on the site. If your question/username appears below, congratulations on being selected to win an early copy of The Last Tourist! You should have received an email from us this morning about your prize. If you haven’t been contacted (check your spam folder and then) please send DM us on Twitter or reach out to info@criminalelement.com to let us know.

Check back next week as Olen answers YOUR questions:

1. You have so many details woven into the story like the CIA office in the World Trade Center and the precursor to the CIA, the Pond. Did you find these true facts before you wrote The Tourist or did you add them later? Was there an advisor who had intelligence work knowledge you worked with or is this all online, maybe CIA museum and imagination? —Submitted by User KathyNV
2. I love the idea that the spies are “tourists”. My question is this. Since the “Tiger” was so elusive that Milo, who had been tracking him for years, was surprised to learn that he was a Christian Scientist – how did his killer know that he was so that he could kill him with the aids virus? And now did the Tiger reconcile his profession with his religious beliefs. —Submitted by User barbarap3
3. There is very little information on the Internet about your background outside where you have lived and your education. How do you research and where do you gain the information to add enough credibility to your fiction (just enough believable truth) to write a fiction story which could be close enough to a real-life case? —Submitted by User Tim Milloff
4. If you were able to cast the characters for a movie, who would you choose? —Submitted by User Toni Bila
5. Anything that was removed from the book during the editing process? —Submitted by User lasvegasnv
6. Do you ever compare your series with any other book series, same/different genre? —Submitted by User Dione Amore
7. Is Milo Weaver based on any real-life person living or dead? —Submitted by User Mrs. Mary M Coder
8. Did you visit all the places that you had Milo go to in this book? The descriptions of the various venues were very realistic. —Submitted by User Romonko
9. How do you develop the storyline? Is it something you plan on multiple sheets of paper or do you use your computer for this? What does it look like? And how do you keep track of the characteristics and the appearance of each person of your story? —Submitted by User Raphael Miese
10. I was struck in The Tourist by how you gave us information about Milo and Tina’s meeting and subsequent marriage in small pieces throughout the novel. Was that a deliberate choice to keep us reading or did you have some other motive? —Submitted by User Wendy Barker

Thank you to all who submitted questions to Olen, and remember to check back in next week to see Olen’s answers! 

More: Listen to an audiobook excerpt of The Last Tourist by Olen Steinhauer:

About The Last Tourist by Olen Steinhauer:

In Olen Steinhauer’s bestseller An American Spy, reluctant CIA agent Milo Weaver thought he had finally put “Tourists”―CIA-trained assassins―to bed.

A decade later, Milo is hiding out in Western Sahara when a young CIA analyst arrives to question him about a series of suspicious deaths and terrorist chatter linked to him.

Their conversation is soon interrupted by a new breed of Tourists intent on killing them both, forcing them to run.

As he tells his story, Milo is joined by colleagues and enemies from his long history in the world of intelligence, and the young analyst wonders what to believe. He wonders, too, if he’ll survive this encounter.

After three standalone novels, Olen Steinhauer returns to the series that made him a New York Times bestseller.