"The Expats" (a thriller) by Chris Pavone

[Guest EXPAT]

I had to look into this book given it's title and the number of years I spent as an EXPAT outside of this country. This looks like a good read according to the review here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/books/the-expats-a-thriller-by-chris-pavone.html

Synopsis:

Kate Moore is a working mother, struggling to make ends meet, to raise children, to keep a spark in her marriage . . . and to maintain an increasingly unbearable life-defining secret. So when her husband is offered a lucrative job in Luxembourg, she jumps at the chance to leave behind her double-life, to start anew. She begins to reinvent herself as an expat, finding her way in a language she doesn’t speak, doing the housewifely things she’s never before done—playdates and coffee mornings, daily cooking and never-ending laundry. Meanwhile, her husband works incessantly, at a job Kate has never understood, for a banking client she’s not allowed to know. He’s becoming distant and evasive; she’s getting lonely and bored. Then another American couple arrives. Kate soon becomes suspicious that these people are not who they say they are, and she’s terrified that her own past is catching up to her. So Kate begins to dig, to peel back the layers of deception that surround her. She discovers fake offices and shell corporations and a hidden gun, a mysterious farmhouse and numbered accounts with bewildering sums of money, and finally unravels the mind-boggling long-play con that threatens her family, her marriage, and her life. Stylish and sophisticated, fiercely intelligent and expertly crafted, The Expats proves Chris Pavone to be a writer of tremendous talent.

[BigK]

I'd probably read it.

[Lucky]

I saw it on the newsstand and added it to my queue.

[JKane]

I had to look into this book given it's title and the number of years I spent as an EXPAT outside of this country.

I saw it online this afternoon and thought of you!

[Lucky]

Well, I now have the novel and am at page 55. It is, so far, one strange book. The author wants to hold a certain level of information from the reader, but he is being just a bit too cryptic. I find it hard to follow. Then, on page 55, the font changed. Just for two pages. That usually means something, but here there is no indication as to what.

I do plan to stick with it. But am I supposed to accept that a wife realyl does not kow for whom her husband works? And can she really keep a job at the CIA killing people from him? Realistically?

And they have supposedly moved to Luxembourg, but for some reason seem to be living in Paris. No doubt it will all become clear.