I was looking for an action suspense novel. I found this, The Expats by Chris Pavone, among the recommended novels in Kinokuniya Bookstore. Initially, I thought I am reading a novel version of 1993’s Point of No Return movie starred by Bridget Fonda. This is story of a female undercover CIA, Kate Moore hoping to live a normal life. The backdrop of the novel was interesting. It was set in a lot of places in Europe when the protagonist’s husband was offered a lucrative job in Luxembourg. Kate gave up her interesting secret life to a ‘boring’ life of being an expat mother and wife. Or so she thinks. She seem to be haunted by her old life as she met a suspicious couple that might not be who they say they are. She delved into more investigations and putting clues together to uncover something that may involve a crime, money laundering or maybe her husband.
The book tends to be a bit overly descriptive and there are parts that gets too dragging. Chris Pavone has created initially an interesting puzzle but later turned into a crazy web of confusion for the readers. The suspense was good but too messy to follow. You will get so confused who really is the bad guy. Even as the novel ends, you will still get another twist to this overly-twisted spy book. This is a good attempt for the Chris Pavone’s first novel but I will be sticking to Patricia Cornwell for now.
