{"id":1047,"date":"2013-06-26T15:38:26","date_gmt":"2013-06-26T21:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=1047"},"modified":"2013-06-26T15:39:37","modified_gmt":"2013-06-26T21:39:37","slug":"chris-pavone-the-expats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/chris-pavone-the-expats\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Pavone: The Expats"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/form>\n

This novel has garnered lots of praise and attention, as well as winning the Edgar for Best First Novel.\u00a0 I can say it was a well-deserved award \u2013 this is a very original and quirky novel that is more than worthy of all the attention.\u00a0 It\u2019s not much like any other novel I\u2019ve ever read \u2013 it has spy elements, international elements, and a strong domestic element that brings what is primarily a spy thriller into the more human realm.\u00a0 It made me like it much more.<\/p>\n

\"expats_cover\"<\/a>I\u2019m not big on spy thrillers and they haven\u2019t been a big part of the genre for awhile \u2013 though it\u2019s making a comeback, certainly, with the success of authors like Vince Flynn or the slyly imaginative Mike Lawson.\u00a0 Pavone brings yet another take.<\/p>\n

Kate Moore\u2019s life has taken a new trajectory as her husband suggests they move their family to Luxembourg for his job and their future financial security.\u00a0 Kate has to quit her own job but quickly realizes she\u2019s happy this decision has been taken out of her hands \u2013 she\u2019s glad to have the incentive to move forward, and she begins the long process of leaving, it turns out, the CIA.\u00a0 She and her family re-settle in Luxembourg becoming, as the titles suggests, ex-pats.\u00a0 She says to her husband it\u2019s like freshman year of college \u2013 everyone is in a new situation and you\u2019re more open to new experiences and people.<\/p>\n

Mixed in with a growing sense of tension regarding Kate\u2019s suspicions of exactly what her husband, Dexter, is up to \u2013 he\u2019s absent for long periods, leaving her alone with two small children \u2013 is the surprising unraveling of her marriage.\u00a0 She becomes dissatisfied with her domestic chores and finds them dull after being a CIA operative, as well she might, I guess, but I was slightly irritated by her<\/i> irritation at the necessity of scrubbing toilets and doing the laundry.\u00a0 We all have to do these things.\u00a0 (It made more sense when I read the end note and found that the male author had been an expat house-husband himself at one point and especially resented the tiny washing machine that could only wash four pairs of children\u2019s pants at a time).<\/p>\n

That aside, Pavone\u2019s delicate dissection of the growing mistrust and distance between Kate and Dexter is masterfully handled, giving an already tense story another level of tension.\u00a0 It\u2019s a little like an amped up version of the movie Charade.<\/i>\u00a0 As they encounter other expats, notably another attractive couple, Bill and Julia, the undercurrents to every interaction between the four adults could be cut with a knife.<\/p>\n

It becomes clear that while Kate has hidden her CIA background from her husband, Dexter is hiding something just as big from her, and it\u2019s shattering to her as Dexter has been the one constant in her life that she hasn\u2019t felt a need to investigate.\u00a0 She\u2019s never felt he needed to act the wealthy financier (though apparently, that\u2019s what he\u2019s becoming) or try and be anything he\u2019s not.\u00a0 The real journey of the novel is Kate\u2019s reluctance to investigate Dexter, as well as the expert help she\u2019s able to receive when she does and her own investigative expertise coming to the fore.<\/p>\n

Kate\u2019s also remembering some of the things she did as a covert op that she regrets and that, in fact, haunt her.\u00a0 The denouement is both a suspenseful and clever wind up of the story, with more twists than you can count, and the coming clean of husband and wife to one another.\u00a0 This is a wonderful, fresh book by an inventive new author.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This novel has garnered lots of praise and attention, as well as winning the Edgar for Best First Novel.\u00a0 I can say it was a well-deserved award \u2013 this is a very original and quirky novel that is more than worthy of all the attention.\u00a0 It\u2019s not much like any other novel I\u2019ve ever read … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[11],"class_list":["post-1047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1047"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1051,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047\/revisions\/1051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}