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saareman's reviews
2952 reviews
The Expats by Chris Pavone
2.0
The setup of this book was promising but there wasn't much actual drama and suspense. Things started to move a bit faster at about the 2/3rds mark, but the overall plot design somewhat undercut that as well. Then it pretty quickly gets wrapped up in a "huh?"-type solution.
Kate Moore is a married mother of two toddlers and who was a CIA operations agent for several years and then a CIA analyst shortly after her first child was born. All for about 10 years total. Kate has never revealed to her husband Dexter that she worked for the CIA, and he thinks she is a policy analyst working at some Washington think-thank. Kate gives up her CIA job when IT security expert Dexter gets a job in Luxembourg, supposedly providing consultant services to one of the many banks headquartered there. They move with their kids to Luxembourg and Kate settles into the life of an expat housewife, shepherding her kids around and going to classes and making friends with other wives doing similar things. One American woman named Julie seems to take an extra interest in Kate. Julie and her husband Bill insinuate themselves into Kate and Dexter's lives. Kate's CIA instincts tell her something is up with these two and also that perhaps Dexter is keeping things from her as well. Meanwhile, Kate has her own secret that she has kept from the CIA which she is worried they may still call her to task on.
This is told in 3 time slots:
1) A main plot starting mostly from the time of Kate and Dexter's arrival in Luxembourg;
2) A flashback background plot (in the same font as the main story, and with no other specific visual identifiers) occasionally inserted in several paragraph chunks giving Kate's operational background in the CIA, her resignation debriefing process and, eventually, the action that she has kept secret from her employer;
3) A flash forward plot (in a different font to the other two plots), which takes place in Paris two years after Kate & Dexter's arrival in Luxembourg.
As I read this, I kept thinking that the flash forward plot was a mistake. It basically sends a signal that all that comes before doesn't matter all that much, since everyone is here 2 years later and nothing must have been resolved earlier since they are still playing at the same cat-and-mouse games. You need all that background but the future interjections robbed a lot of drama and suspense from the story for me.
The final solution and explanation felt too forced and clever and didn't rescue the book for me but it was inventive and convoluted enough that I'd certainly read a further book by Chris Pavone to see what else he'll come up with.
Kate Moore is a married mother of two toddlers and who was a CIA operations agent for several years and then a CIA analyst shortly after her first child was born. All for about 10 years total. Kate has never revealed to her husband Dexter that she worked for the CIA, and he thinks she is a policy analyst working at some Washington think-thank. Kate gives up her CIA job when IT security expert Dexter gets a job in Luxembourg, supposedly providing consultant services to one of the many banks headquartered there. They move with their kids to Luxembourg and Kate settles into the life of an expat housewife, shepherding her kids around and going to classes and making friends with other wives doing similar things. One American woman named Julie seems to take an extra interest in Kate. Julie and her husband Bill insinuate themselves into Kate and Dexter's lives. Kate's CIA instincts tell her something is up with these two and also that perhaps Dexter is keeping things from her as well. Meanwhile, Kate has her own secret that she has kept from the CIA which she is worried they may still call her to task on.
This is told in 3 time slots:
1) A main plot starting mostly from the time of Kate and Dexter's arrival in Luxembourg;
2) A flashback background plot (in the same font as the main story, and with no other specific visual identifiers) occasionally inserted in several paragraph chunks giving Kate's operational background in the CIA, her resignation debriefing process and, eventually, the action that she has kept secret from her employer;
3) A flash forward plot (in a different font to the other two plots), which takes place in Paris two years after Kate & Dexter's arrival in Luxembourg.
As I read this, I kept thinking that the flash forward plot was a mistake. It basically sends a signal that all that comes before doesn't matter all that much, since everyone is here 2 years later and nothing must have been resolved earlier since they are still playing at the same cat-and-mouse games. You need all that background but the future interjections robbed a lot of drama and suspense from the story for me.
The final solution and explanation felt too forced and clever and didn't rescue the book for me but it was inventive and convoluted enough that I'd certainly read a further book by Chris Pavone to see what else he'll come up with.