The Expats

I typically don’t read spy novels or thrillers, but I was looking for a quick read while on a trip that would be entertaining. Chris Pavone’s debut novel “Expats” was so highly recommended on its book jacket (in retrospect don’t trust these) by Patricia Cornwell, John Grisham and others that I thought surely this would be it. Grisham even compared it to the early works of Ken Follet, Frederick Forsyth and Robert Ludlum; oh, but if only this were true.

At the beginning, “Expats” is quite promising and the idea of it intriguing. A husband (Dexter) gets a new job overseas as a computer security analyst for a high-paying client, which leads his wife (Kate) to decide to quit her secret life as a CIA spy and come clean living as an expat with him in Luxembourg. She seeks to end the duplicity in their marriage from her CIA days and to become a stay-at-home mom to their two sons learning the ways of a foreign country. But life gets too boring for Kate, sitting around dreading the laundry and vacant other moms! And soon suspicions lead her back to undercover work, first in regards to a couple she senses aren’t whom they say are, and ultimately to her husband who apparently has secrets of his own. (Quite a marriage.)

The whole expat atmosphere and deceit within the marriage propel the novel and make the plot interesting. But intermixed flashbacks of Kate’s CIA past confuse and distract from the main storytelling. Also the slew of twists at the end are a turn off, as the tireless scheming (I agree here with the Times’ Janet Maslin) “exceeds all sane expectations.” And I mean that in a uncomplimentary way. It turns pretty nuts. I had to fight my way through to finish it, as it no longer seemed plausible or interesting to me. What starts out promising, spins off the rails in rapid form towards the end.