|
Loading... The Expatsby Chris Pavone
None.  timtom | May 9, 2013 |  If you read/enjoyed "The Gone Girl", this one may be on your list, also. Life in Luxemborg as an 'expat' among the small but close American community and a woman adjusting to being a Mom and coffee-klatcher after having left a CIA job. But, oh, the secrets she holds and if . . . . or when - will they be exposed and by whom ? However, what about her husband who brought them here for a well paid job which he shares nothing about? Does he have secrets, also ? What about the newest friends ? Twist, Turn, Twist, Turn, Twist, Turn and I couldn't guess all the surprises. (  ) CasaBooks | Apr 28, 2013 | A first book and I hope the first of many. Good writing, good story . Great descriptions of expat living and experiences. ( ) librarian1204 | Apr 27, 2013 | Big league secrets between a husband and wife make this story work. Kate's background in the CIA as a former case manager and sometime assassin makes it all too easy for her to be suspicious of everyone, and ultimately, her own husband. Dexter has always seemed to be a low profile computer geek--gentle and loving. When he is offered a very lucrative job in cyber security by a large and unnamed bank in Luxembourg, Kate resigns her career with the CIA to become a very, very bored housewife and joins the local expat community of equally bored wives in Luxembourg. Because of the secretive nature of his job, Dexter is not allowed to tell Kate anything about his job. Initially, because of her own background, she tolerates the lack of information and his explanations. Later, this will contribute to her own suspicions, her need to investigate and finally, to try and shield her husband from the consequences of his actions. (  ) cfk | Apr 12, 2013 | Kate is your average working mom. She's in the house taking care of the kids when her husband comes home and tells her they're moving to Luxembourg... within the month. Kate jumps at the chance to leave her job, except she never really told her husband what she really does for a living. When the family arrives in their new home, Kate starts her new role as a housewife and full-time mom. As her husband starts to grow distant and Kate starts to worry, a new couple moves into their neighborhood, but Kate suspects that they are not as they seem... just as she realizes that her past may have caught up with her. Whoa. This book was freaking amazing! I love spy novels. I especially love spy novels that take place in Europe. But a spy novel in Europe with a FEMALE protagonist seemed too good to be true... and yet here we are with this wonderful book! I think what makes this book so compelling (besides the nonstop suspense) is that Kate has a real life. She isn't the solitary aging man with no strings attached and badly stained teeth from too much whiskey and smoking. She has a real family which she must protect at the same time as figuring out what the heck is going on around her. This isn't just a one dimensional book about spies. It is about how a marriage can be just as complicated as politics and international relations. There were a few elements of Gone Girl in it for me insomuch as there is this sense that you never really know who you are married to. I hope you will pick this one up for a great read. It's quick, but has depth, and it is definitely worth it. I can't wait to see what Pavone comes up with next! Thanks to TLC Book Tours for letting me read and review this book! ( )1  BookAddictKatie | Apr 10, 2013 |
What would happen to an expert CIA agent, 15 years in the job, who gives it all up to be a stay-at-home mum, exchanging assassinations and double-dealing for playdates, coffee mornings and tennis lessons? That's the reality of life for Kate Moore in Chris Pavone's debut, after her computer-geek husband Dexter accepts a job in Luxembourg and she decides that family is more important than work. As Dexter works all hours at his mysterious new job in banking, she makes friends with other mothers, joins the American Women's Club of Luxembourg and meets an American couple, Julia and Bill Maclean. But Kate is bored – intensely, dangerously bored. So when she decides there's something off about the Macleans, she begins to investigate. Tension builds, notch by notch, as Kate uncovers deception buried beneath deception, lies inside lies. Nothing, even her family, is what it seems, and she is terrified that her own dirty past as a CIA operative is catching up with her. Pavone, a former book publishing editor who lived in Luxembourg for two years with his family, has created a startlingly real heroine in Kate. She's a former spy with a talent for languages and maps, hand-to-hand combat and guns; an expert assassin, cold enough and capable enough to kill. But Kate is no cipher: she's also a fiercely loving mother and a wife who has kept her past secret from her husband all these years. And she's terrified when her two worlds start to collide. Expertly and intricately plotted, with a story spiralling into disaster and a satisfyingly huge amount of double crossing, The Expats certainly doesn't feel like a first novel. This is an impressively assured entry to the thriller scene. Kate Moore is the kind of woman who can kill, and who has killed, in-between being a mother to her two small sons and a wife to her rather nondescript husband, Dexter. Only one killing seems to haunt her, but she has been well trained to control her emotions. When Kate relocates with her family to Luxemburg because of Dexter’s new and amorphous banking job, she also makes a major change in her own professional life. She has never told Dexter that she worked for 15 years as an operations officer for the CIA. Nor did she tell him that the job involved shooting people. She ostensibly cuts all ties with the agency although there are a few loopholes she can climb back thtough, as one might expect. But the move to Luxembourg is not what she expected. She finds it boring to be plunged into domesticity, cooking, scrubbing and babysitting her two small sons. What she does find surprising is that she becomes more than curious about the new job of the previously predictable Dexter. He is so mysterious about his work and what it involves that it rouses her suspicion, a situation in which Kate presumably sees the irony that he might be involved in intelligence work. As in most espionage mysteries, nothing is what it seems.
References to this work on external resources.
|
LibraryThing AuthorChris Pavone is a LibraryThing Author, an author who lists their personal library on LibraryThing.
 Google Books — Loading...
Popular coversRatingAverage: (3.61)
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wikipedia in English
1
The fact that the main character is a powerful woman is a nice change from the usual espionage novels. Plus, the contrast between her struggle to keep up taking care of her family while conducting her personal investigation is another thing I liked in that book. Finally, it gave a pretty good description of what it’s like to move to a foreign country… (