The Expats: A Novel by Chris Pavone (Crown, $26.00, 336 pages)
The Expats by editor-turned-novelist Chris Pavone has all the twists and turns of a Robert Ludlum or Clive Cussler action-thriller, plus a domestic element that sets it apart from the pack: it plays the layers of duplicity in Kate and Dexter Moore’s professional lives against the secrets they guard from each other in their marriage.
Kate is a spy and a young mom – a smart, self-consciously attractive, nominally maternal, thirty-something who trades a CIA career to stay home with the kids when Dexter lands a lucrative banking security job in Luxembourg. But nothing and no one in The Expats is as advertised. Kate’s nagging questions about her husband’s fundamental character spur her to investigate when she senses threatening intentions in a friendly American couple they meet in the ex-pat community in Luxembourg.
Don’t read it for shimmering imagery or deeply conflicted characters. It isn’t that kind of book. Kate is Jason Bourne in a skirt. She can remove herself from the Company, but she can’t squash the instincts that made her a hired gun. The Expats is a set of spiraling secrets, the exposition of which is played out in lushly detailed European cities.
In a Publishers Weekly interview in January, Chris Pavone said, “A detailed map of the story line was what made it possible to write such a labyrinthine book…” – in addition to a numbered list of the twists and turns. Action thriller fans will love this one. Well recommended.
Kimberly Caldwell
A review copy was provided by the publisher. The Expats was released on March 6, 2012. “Brilliant, insanely clever, and delectably readable.” Library Journal
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