Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone

“Two Nights in Lisbon” is Chris Pavone’s fifth novel. While I’ve not read his work before, the first four novels have already been reviewed by 2 of us here at MRB. They have raved about his writing, and now I see why. I’m excited to know there are four more books that I’ll have to consume. Unfortunately, it’s been too many weeks between writing this review and reading the book. I was also intrigued by the title since I’ve been planning to make a trip to Portugal, so he introduced me to parts of Lisbon that I now need to see, including the Praca do Comerico which had once been “the beating heart of Portugal.”   

The protagonist is Ariel, an American woman, and she has come to Portugal with her husband of three months, John Wright. He’s on a business trip and he asked her to come along, although he gave her a false reason for her presence, saying his business partners were eager to meet her, when that was actually not true. Once in Lisbon, John disappeared without any explanation. After a short period of time, she learns that he has been kidnapped and the kidnappers have demanded a ransom of $3,000,000, which Ariel and John do not have. She was warned against contacting the police.

 

Ariel made a call to un unwanted but possible source of the money, Charlie Wolfe, who is about to be named the Vice President by the next American presidential candidate. In a mysterious call to Charlie, Ariel presented an extortion scheme to him, saying that if he did not come across with $3,000,000 immediately, that she would reveal a secret about him, something that would severely damage his political career. She knew the call to him would be ugly, and it was. But money was provided to her, which was in turn given to the kidnappers. However, when the transfer happened, there was a glitch which Ariel seemed not to understand. By this time, the Portuguese police detectives were involved. Ariel was detained under suspicion that the kidnapping had been faked. But finally, her husband was released unharmed.

 

This was only the midpoint of the story, lots of well-written plot twists were yet to occur. If I go farther, then I will spoil your reading of this very clever novel. It was a most satisfying read. If my reading queue was not so long, I would jump directly to Pavone’s first novel, The Accident, but I will immediately get a copy of it so I can read it soon.

Thanks to McMillan for the chance to read this before it has been officially published. The book will be available on 5/24/22.

 

 

WCD

The Paris Diversion by Chris Pavone

The Paris Diversion is a sequel to Chris Pavone’s first novel, The Expats which was favorably reviewed twice on MRB.  Protagonist Kate Moore is a clandestine CIA operative who lives in Paris with her day trader husband, Dexter and her two children.  One fall morning in Paris sirens begin to blare as a suspected terrorist enters a public square outside the Louvre Palace wearing a vest packed with explosives and carrying a suitcase presumed to contain a dirty bomb.

Simultaneously, the CEO of a major tech company, Hunter Forsyth is escorted to a safe house by body guards he mistakenly believes are loyal to him.  Instead he is being unwittingly detained on a day he is expected to announce a major acquisition by his company, 4Syte.  Coincidently, Dexter has a personal grudge against Forsyth and has sold a massive amount of 4Syte stock short with expectations of a plummet in the company’s value.  So Kate’s job is to figure out what is actually happening in Paris and who is truly responsible, all the while hoping the incident does not involve her husband.

Chris Pavone is on the fast track.  This Edgar and Anthony awards winner has already written three best sellers and this one due to be released next month will surely follow.  His complexity of plot, his scrambling of seemingly unrelated events, and his ability to tie it all together very late in the story, all adds to the anticipation and ultimate thrill ride.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance look.

The Travelers

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The Travelers by Chris Pavone was recommended by author Eliot Peper, It’s Pavone’s third espionage novel. Will Rhodes is a travel writer for a longstanding New York high-end travel magazine. His wife, Chloe, had worked there until their marriage three years before, but she quit apparently for fear that their careers might suffer while working for the same company. As a travel writer, Will continued to travel the world, and he wrote about the best of luxury travel, about great places, great wines and great food. He was deeply in love with Chloe, but he kept bumping into a very hot woman who kept trying to recruit will to work for her, allegedly a CIA operative. She got Will into bed and then threatened to provide Chloe with evidence of their liaison if he did not do what she wanted. Would the CIA really have it’s operatives use sexual blackmail?

So, all was not as it appeared, either at the Travelers agency, or at the CIA, or with Chloe. This was a complex plot with lots of characters and action that moved rapidly around the world. It was a captivating read to the end. Now I’m tempted to jump into Pavone’s earlier books, but I do have a couple other books that are calling to me from my reading queue. Thanks Eliot for the recommendation. You haven’t steered me wrong yet.

The Travelers by Chris Pavone

Will Rhodes is an up and coming journalist in a dying business.  He works for Travelers, a travel magazine and globe trots to exotic and luxurious places to absorb the atmosphere -- food, wine, and culture -- to tempt American upscale tourists into a visit.  When traveling abroad, Will is often asked by is boss, Malcolm Sommers to deliver a personal and confidential envelop to the head of their agency branch in the foreign city.  

Will is happily married to another journalist, Chole who had also worked for Travelers but moved on to freelance work to diversify their professional financial exposure, a major concern for the newly married couple.  Will’s frequent travel quickly grows routine and tiresome and is taking a toll on his marriage when he meets a beautiful blond CIA operative, posing as a journalist.  Elle tempts Will with sex and money and ultimately recruits him as a spy against his employer.  Elle asks Will to spy on everyone he trusts in exchange for ten thousand dollars a month and a threat of blackmail.  His life will never be the same.

The more Will learns about Malcolm, his coworkers and his wife, the more confused he becomes.  Is anyone who they say they are?  Are they all working for the CIA, some rogue branch of the CIA, or some other foreign government or private entity?  Who does Elle really work for?  After a couple close calls, Will decides he can no longer live like this.  He must find out who is who and what is what, even if it kills him.

This is my third Chris Pavone novel and by far his most enjoyable.  It’s easy to empathize with the protagonist, Will Rhodes because he didn’t ask to be placed in this precarious situation.  He just happened into a spy ring… wrong place, wrong time.  Now comes the adventure for the reader and the challenge for Will, figuring out the true motives of all the people closest to him and why they picked him to be a part of it.  Pavone is getting better and better and I understand Dream Works agrees as they have acquired the film rights to The Traveler.  Thanks to NetGalley for the preview.

The Accident by Chris Pavone

The Accident is Chris Pavone’s second novel, the first being The Expats for which he won an Edgar Award.  This second thriller gives an insider’s look at big time publishing and corruption in big business, politics, and the CIA all premised around the pending publishing of an unauthorized biography.  The subject of the biography is media mogul Charlie Wolfe who has aspirations for public office and secrets worth killing for.

The biography contains accusations that Wolfe had accidently killed a young coed when he was in college and then with the help of his father (then deputy CIA director) covered up the crime. David Miller, Wolfe's best friend and later business partner witnessed the crime and fostered the cover-up. Wolfe goes on to build a hugely successful news network at times covertly altering world events for exclusive news value. Now decades later, Miller has found his conscience and is exposing Wolfe’s criminal activity to the world in this telling book.  To avoid criminal charges himself and the wrath of Wolfe and his co-conspirators, Miller fakes a terminal illness then his own death and goes into hiding to author his book anonymously. He then releases it for publishing through Isabel Reed, a New York literary agent.

Isabel Reed receives the mysterious manuscript and distributes it to a few of her cronies in the publishing world. That list includes her assistant Alexus, publisher friend Jeff Fielder and movie agent Camille.  With the conventional publishing business in a state of decline, the right manuscript could bolster careers for a lucky few.

After an all-night read Isabel realizes the explosive nature of the book.  Not only would Charlie Wolfe’s career plans be ruined but politicians and CIA insiders would be investigated for their sinister roles in world political events.  Clearly Wolfe and his rouge CIA insiders would kill to keep this story under wraps.  So not only is Isabel’s life in danger but also everyone to whom she had distributed manuscript copies the previous day.

 

Isabel’s assistant, Alexus is found murdered in her apartment, the copied manuscript missing.  Isabel quickly goes into hiding collecting Jeff as she flees.  Little did she know Wolfe had anticipated his partner’s rebellion… even Isabel’s and Jeff’s involvement… so Isabel’s survival depends on her wits.

There is a lot right with The Accident.  It has all the elements of a great mystery/ thriller.  A high stakes game with deception at its core, Pavone creates the mystery then meters out the key info with plenty of thrills and intrigue on route to a satisfying conclusion.  However, each chapter is told from the perspective of a different person and many times the author fails to identify that person… interesting oversight from an author who was once an editor himself.  A couple times I was on page two of the chapter before I figured out which character was narrating.  This makes for a very confusing journey, particularly if you don’t read it in one sitting.  Nonetheless, I think this new author holds great promise… just still a little rough around the edges.

The Expats by Chris Pavone

(I need to review our own content from time to time. when I looked at my post on our site's design, I thought it look familiar. Turns out Midwest Dave beat me to it. No matter, check out both reviews for two takes on the same story.)

He does something in computer security. She works for the State Department. They live a comfortable, but check-to-check life in Washington, DC with their 2 preschool sons. When Dexter gets a job offer in Luxembourg to crank up electronic security for a bank chain (for big bucks), they see it as a chance to get ahead while living the expat life in Europe.

That means Kate has to give up her decent job and occasional travel and, with two kids in tow, join a small band of expat American women whose husbands all do something in finance, who’ve given up a nanny in the US to become housewives in a strange country.

When you’ve had a good job and now scrub toilets, take kids to/from school, have coffee with the other moms, well, life is pretty boring. Dexter gets to travel around Europe to various bank branches and the tasks he agreed to do become more and more demanding of his time. Kate really doesn’t know what Dexter does. He tries to explain, but it’s just too complex to explain to a novice such as Kate.

A new couple joins this expat community. Bill and Julia. Childless. He, like the rest of the husbands, is also in finance. Bill and Dexter become tennis buds, so Julia and Kate are sort of expected to become friends by default. Julia is a whinny thing from Chicago (and Kate hates Chicago). Kate thinks Julia sort of follows her around because she’s too insecure to go out on her own.

But Kate’s bored mind starts to think that maybe Julia is following her and that creeps Kate out. So she does a little digging on her own and her mind starts to play wild ‘what if’, ‘maybe’, ‘perhaps’ games as she tries to put together some back story for this mouse.

Because that’s what Kate does . . . or did. See, for 15 years, Kate didn’t work for the State Department. She was a case officer for the CIA, mostly in central and South America. She learned from the best how to lie, cheat, steal, manipulate, and, yes, even kill. More than once. When she married Dexter and had kids, she shifted to an analyst position. Still in the game, but on the sidelines. And what she learns is that not only are Bill and Julia hiding secrets, so is Dexter . . . and herself, too.

Secrets about their individual and collective past, a Serbian colonel, a Mexican thug/politician, a Dutch prostitute, a really touchy Russian General, and a missing cache of 50 million Euros. Amidst the boring day-to-day minutiae of an expat housewife, Kate manages to revive some old skills, both psychological and physical, to unravel what the hell is going on, without telling Dexter just who she really is, or was.

And that’s what The Expats is all about - what do you do when you (both) withheld secrets from the one you should trust implicitly. For probably 85% of the book, Pavone drags us through Kate’s daily doldrums and her hyperactive imagination. That he keeps you reading page after page after page of daily expat life is quite remarkable. With each tiny and insignificant reveal, we get sucked just that much deeper into Kate’s paranoia. And when we get to the BIG REVEAL at the end, the layers of the onion get peeled back one by one and we learn that we really did have all the information needed, but those damn secrets just kept getting in the way (shades of The Usual Suspects?). 

This 2012 book is Pavone’s first novel and when a newcomer’s first book hits the NY Times best seller list, you can bet it’s had some pretty good word-of-mouth support. The last initial effort in the spy thriller genre I read that grabbed me this strongly was Alex Berensen’s The Faithful Spy. The complex web of lies and manipulations reminded me of Olen Steinhauer – two authors in my power rotation. High praise indeed. So, now I sit, eagerly awaiting for my name to rise to the top of the wait list for his next, The Accident.  

The Expats by Chris Pavone

The Expats by Chris Pavone is a spy mystery/ thriller featuring Kate Moore, former CIA operative and current wife and mother.  What happens to a CIA operative who decides to leave the business to lead an ordinary live?  Can someone accustom to secrets and deception in a clandestine occupation suddenly become a wife and mother totally open to her family with no ghosts lurking in the shadows?

Katherine Moore is recruited by the CIA directly out of college and works her way up in the organization.  She is assigned to Latin America where she runs assets for the company and supports U.S. friendly candidates in elections.  More than once she has had to assassinate enemies of state.  Kate has no close living family and carefully chooses her husband, Dexter.  Dexter works in banking security and Kate tells him she writes position papers for the State Department.  Mutually in high security jobs neither is suspicious when work issues are never discussed.   They have two boys together and Kate juggles her two lives with ever increasing stress.  Dexter is not a mover and shaker in his job so financially, they never seem to get ahead.  Then one day, Dexter announces he has a lucrative job offer in Luxembourg that would allow Kate to stay at home and raise their family.  Kate jumps at this chance of normality and immediately quits her job.

Settling into their new life in Luxembourg, the couple befriends another expat couple, Bill and Julia.  As time goes on, Dexter remains very private about his work, not even willing to reveal the name of his employer to Kate but the money rolls in as promised.  She becomes increasingly suspicious of Bill and Julia when they show up in unexpected places and ask probing questions about their personal lives.  Kate becomes convinced either she or Dexter is being investigated…but why and by whom?  Because she can’t reveal the sins from her former life to Dexter, she feels she can’t ask him to do the same.  Instead she decides to use her training to investigate Dexter as well as Bill and Julia.  She learns that no one is who they appear to be.  Evidence suggests that Dexter is a clever cyber thief and is at risk of being caught by a dangerous arms dealer as well as multiple law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and Europe.  Now Kate must use her professional skill set to save her family.

The author uses a series of flashbacks from three different settings to create intrigue and build suspense, gradually revealing the truth to the reader.  This can be confusing at times but serves to clue in the reader on the secrets and deceptions within each of the character’s careers, their marriage and their private lives at the most opportune time.  This is Pavone’s first effort and I thought a reasonably good one.  He’s not yet in my power rotation but worth a second look.