Six Degrees of Separation: From Theory & Practice to The Paris Diversion

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six books, forming a chain. The common points may be obvious, like a word in the title or a shared theme, or more personal. Every month Kate provides the title of a book as the starting point.

The starting book this month is Theory & Practice  by Michelle de Kretser. This book won the Stella Prize, a major literary award celebrating Australian women’s writing, and championing diversity and cultural change. Theory & Practice is described as autofiction; thus it is a blend between autobiography and fiction. When I was looking into this subgenre of fiction, I was both confused and interested in all the descriptions and various interpretations. 

1st degree:

My first link will be to Outline by Rachel Cusk, which is also described as autofiction. I have that book on my shelves, unread. So I hope to give it a try soon.

The main character in Outline is a novelist who goes to Athens, Greece to teach a writing course during the summer. She has ten conversations with people she meets on the way to Athens and during her stay there.

2nd degree:

The second link is to The Messenger of Athens by Anne Zouroudi. This book takes place mainly on the fictional Greek island, Thiminos. A woman is found dead at the bottom of a cliff; the local police call it an accident. Then a stranger comes to Thiminos from Athens, with the intention of solving her murder.

This is another book I have on my bookshelves. The Greek Detective series gets good reviews and I should read it soon.

3rd degree:

The Light of Day by Eric Ambler starts in Athens and ends up in Turkey.  Arthur Simpson, thief and con man, is hired to drive a car to Turkey. He does not know that he is smuggling illegal weapons in the car, and he is caught by border guards. The authorities force him to deliver the weapons to the people who hired him, in order to uncover their nefarious plans. 

The book was adapted to screen as Topkapi. Peter Ustinov won an Oscar for Supporting Actor for the role of Arthur. Maximilian Schell and Robert Morley also starred.

4th degree:

The James Bond spy thriller From Russia with Love (1957, Ian Fleming) is set in Instanbul, Turkey. The Russians plot to rid themselves of James Bond by faking the defection of a female cipher clerk. Bond is sent to Istanbul to help the defector escape. They take the Orient Express from Istanbul to Paris, where the story ends. Also made into a very successful film, starring Sean Connery.

5th degree:

A good portion of the last book took place on a train and it ended in Paris. That takes me to The Sleeping-Car Murders by Sébastien Japrisot, a French author, screenwriter and film director. This novel was first published in French in 1962. The night train from Marseilles arrives in Paris. In the sleeping car, the body of a young woman is found dead. This is a police procedural and the investigation takes place in Paris.

6th degree:

My last link is to a book that also takes place in Paris. The Paris Diversion by Chris Pavone is an espionage thriller which begins with a terror attack on Paris. It is the second book featuring Kate Moore and her husband Dexter. The first book was The Expats. This is a very fast-paced thriller (at times) but the story is told very well.

This is another Six Degrees where I rediscovered some books on my own shelves that I have not read yet. 

My Six Degrees took me from Athens, Greece to Turkey and then ended up in Paris, France. Have you read any of these books? 

If you did this month's Six Degrees, where did your list take you?

The next Six Degrees will be on August 2, 2025, and the starting book will be the 2025 Women’s Prize winner, The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden.

  

Books Read in November 2024

 

November was a very good reading month; I enjoyed reading all the books. I finished an excellent nonfiction history book that I had started in early September. I read a romantic comedy / chick lit book that was way outside of my normal reading. And five crime fiction books, all very good. 

Nonfiction / History

Tudors (2012) by Peter Ackroyd

I read this book because I wanted to know more about the Tudors. The subtitle is "The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I." I had read novels that covered the Tudor years but those focused on specific events or people, such as the Wolf Hall Trilogy about Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII. In this nonfiction book, I learned a lot about Henry VIII, including more about each wife and the religious turmoil at the time. I was surprised by many things that happened Elizabeth's reign. This was a great overview and I will look for more to read on the subject.

Fiction

The Rosie Project (2013) by Graeme Simsion

This novel is about a socially challenged genetics professor, Don Tillotson. He has Asperger's Syndrome, although that is never stated in the book. He lives an orderly life, planned to the last detail, but he has few friends. He decides he would like to find a wife, so he comes up with a questionnaire to eliminate women with habits or interests he could not tolerate. The story is unrealistic but lots of fun. I don't usually read romantic comedies, and I didn't really realize that this was one when I started it, but I liked it anyway. 

Crime Fiction

Two Nights in Lisbon (2022) by Chris Pavone

This is not a spy thriller but it sure feels like one. The reader and the characters don't know who to trust. I did not know what was going on most of the time. Well, I knew the basic plot (a couple goes to Lisbon on business and there is a kidnapping) but it was clear from the beginning that a lot was being withheld from the reader. I loved it, but I have loved all of Chris Pavone's novels, so I am prejudiced.

Alias Emma (2022) by Ava Glass

This is the first book in a relatively new spy fiction series. Emma Makepeace has always wanted to be a spy. Her father, who died before she was born, was a spy, and she idolizes him. Emma's first important assignment is to bring Michael Primalova, the son of Russian dissidents, across London to a safehouse, so that he and his parents can be put in protective custody. My review here.

Three Men Out (1954) by Rex Stout

I am working my way through the novella collections in the Nero Wolfe series. All of them are rereads. The stories are  "This Won't Kill You", "Invitation to Murder" and "The Zero Clue". The stories were first published in The American Magazine. 

Deadland (2019) by William Shaw

Deadland is the second book in the DS Alexandra Cupidi series, but there is a book written earlier that introduced Cupidi, so I consider this the third book. There are multiple plotlines. Two teenagers steal a phone from a very dangerous man. They end up running and hiding to avoid him, because he wants to kill them. DS Cupidi's case revolves around a human arm found in a valuable vase in an art gallery. She has to determine whether the arm is part of a dead body, or if somehow the person is still alive. Both the main characters and the secondary characters are well defined and interesting and the mystery plots are good too. If I had any complaint is was that it felt long. 

A Darker Domain (2008) by Val McDermid

This book is the second book in the Karen Pirie series. Detective Inspector Karen Pirie is in charge of the Cold Case department in Fife, Scotland. First, a woman reports that her father has been missing for over 20 years, from the time of the Miner’s Strike of 1984.  Shortly after that, new information shows up in Italy related to a kidnapping that also took place in 1984 in Fife, and that case is added to Karen's workload. See my review.

Currently Reading

Actually, I will start reading this one tonight. Between 1952 and 1968, James Yaffe published eight short stories in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. In each story, Dave, a detective in the New York Homicide Squad, and his wife Shirley visit his mother and they discuss one of his cases over dinner. She asks some pertinent questions and solves the case; Dave is afraid that his coworkers are going to find out that his success rate with cases is due to his mother's help. Between 1988 and 1992, Yaffe wrote four mystery novels about Dave and his Mom. The four novels are set in Colorado, not New York.  Mom Meets Her Maker is the 2nd of the four novels. The book is set at Christmas, and I think it will be a perfect read for this time of year. 

The photo at the top of the post is a pot of succulents in our back fenced-in area in 2008. The photos immediately above were also taken in 2008, in Alice Keck Park Memorial Garden. The photos were taken and processed by my husband. Click on the images for best viewing quality.

Books Read in December 2023

 

 

December was a very good reading month. I had planned to read Winter Solstice to coincide with the solstice, and I finished two days before Winter solstice, on December 19th. The remainder of my books were mysteries: two with espionage elements, one Christmas mystery, the most recent Thursday Murder Club mystery, and a book of Miss Marple short stories by Agatha Christie.

Fiction

Winter Solstice (2000) by Rosamunde Pilcher

Elfrida Phipps, once an actress on the London stage, 62 years old, has been living in Dipton in Hampshire, England. She has become friends with Gloria and Oscar Blundell and their 12-year-old daughter. Oscar's wife and child are killed in an automobile accident. Oscar asks Elfrida to help him move to Creagan, Scotland where he owns half of an Estate House which used to belong to his grandmother. Mainly set in Scotland in the two months leading up to Christmas, this is a lovely story of friends and family.  See my review.

Crime Fiction

The Last Devil to Die (2023) by Richard Osman

Book 4 in the Thursday Murder Club series. Two men and two women in their seventies or eighties have formed a club called the Thursday Murder Club. They started out investigating cold cases, but now they investigate current crimes whenever they get the chance. In this case, an antique dealer has been killed. He was a friend of Elizabeth's husband Stephen, and the foursome feel they have to solve the crime. Their friends in the police discourage them, but they persist. Joyce takes on a bigger role in this case. This is a wonderful series; I will continue to read these books as long as the author writes them.

Missionary Stew (1983) by Ross Thomas

I loved this book; it is only the third book I have read by this author. I would call it a political thriller but it has a bit of espionage too. All the characters in this book are very strange; that is often true in fiction about politics or espionage. The two protagonists had unusual childhoods, one with a father who was jailed for being a Communist, the other having been basically ignored by his mother, an intelligence operative in France during World War II. The mother is a real piece of work. And one of the prominent secondary characters is named Velveeta Keats. I want to read all the rest of his books, and fortunately I have ten of them on my shelves. 

The Paris Diversion (2018) by Chris Pavone

I have read Pavone's first three books and enjoyed them. The Paris Diversion is an espionage thriller which begins with a terror attack on Paris. It is the second book featuring Kate Moore and her husband Dexter. The first book was The Expats. If you enjoy fast-paced thrillers you might like this.

Who Killed the Curate? (1944) by Joan Coggin

This is a vintage Christmas mystery, a humorous mystery, of the screwball comedy type, I guess. It was first reprinted by Rue Morgue Press in 2001, and more recently reissued by Galileo Publishers in the UK. The main character is Lady Lupin, who is now married to a vicar and living in a small village. She doesn't fit in at all; she is too scatterbrained and doesn't have any idea of how to be a vicar's wife, but she is so well-meaning that no one minds too much. And she and her husband are madly in love, which is very refreshing. It is set at Christmas which is why I had saved it to read in December. I enjoyed it, but I only recommend it to readers who like a lot of humor in their mysteries.

Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories (1985) by Agatha Christie

This collection is comprised of 20 short stories by Christie, all starring Miss Marple, the amateur sleuth who lives in a small village in the UK and uses her observations of the people she knows in St Mary Mead to solve crimes. The first thirteen short stories were published in book form in The Thirteen Problems in 1932 (aka The Tuesday Club Murders). The others were published in three other collections of Christie's stories, mixed in with stories about other sleuths. I reviewed some stories from this collection in June, in September, and this month.

End of Year notes

I read 90 books in 2023. The longest book I read was 823 pages:  Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. The average number of pages for the books I read was 295. 

Of the 90 books I read, 60 books were from my TBR pile (purchased prior to 2023), which surpassed my goal of 48 books. I will continue to aim at 48 books from my TBR in 2024. 

I read more espionage books in 2023. Of the 65 mysteries I read, ten were espionage novels. One of my nonfiction books was about espionage in World War II, Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre. Espionage fiction is my go to comfort reading. That may sound strange because so often those books are fast-paced thrillers. I do love those too, but several espionage books I read this year were slow-paced thoughtful books.

I was surprised that I read 12 nonfiction books. Several were books about books, one was graphic nonfiction, and two were biographies of the Mitford sisters. 

The photos at the top and bottom of this post were taken at the Alice Keck Park Memorial Garden, a small park in Santa Barbara. One of our favorite places to visit, it is near downtown and covers only one city block, but has lots of paths to walk around on. The large aloe plant with orange flowers at the top was blooming in January 2023, and I have seen many such plants all over the Santa Barbara / Goleta area in December and January.

The photos were taken and processed by my husband. Click on the images for the best viewing quality.

Reading Summary for June 2021

I had a great month of reading in June. I loved all of the books I read, in different ways. The books were from my 20 Books of Summer list. And I read two books that were not mysteries.

I did travel to many different places in my reading this month... an unnamed South American country, Germany, Bosnia, Russia, and the UK of course. In addition, in The Travelers, I visited France, Argentina, Italy, and Iceland.

General Fiction

Bel Canto (2001) by Ann Patchett

This was a beautifully written book about a very interesting subject: the people attending a banquet for a Japanese businessman at an embassy in a South American country are taken hostage by insurgents. My review here.

Science Fiction

All Systems Red (2017) by Martha Wells

This is the first novella in the Murderbot Diaries series.  The protagonist is a SecBot (Security robot) that has both human and robotic parts. I was very impressed with this book, especially since it is a novella. It does end with a cliff hanger of a sort, but that was fine with me. Even before reading the book, I expected that I would want to continue the series.

Crime Fiction

The Birdwatcher (2016) by William Shaw

This book is a character-driven police procedural featuring Sergeant William South. He is working on a murder team with a new Detective Sergeant, Alexandra Cupidi, since she is unfamiliar with the area and the body was discovered in his neighborhood. The victim is his next door neighbor, Bob Rayner. Both men were birdwatchers. My review here.

The Small Boat of Great Sorrows (2003) by Dan Fesperman

This is the second book in a short series about Vlado Petric from Bosnia. In the first book he was a homicide detective in Sarajevo, who escaped during the siege of Sarajevo. In this book, he is living in Berlin with his family, and is given the opportunity to return to Bosnia. Both books are very good, but this can be read as a standalone. My review here.

The Travelers (2016) by Chris Pavone

The Washington Post describes The Travelers as a Hitchcockian thriller, and points to similar elements in two of Hitchcock's films, Notorious and North by Northwest. My review here.

Three Stations (2010) by Martin Cruz Smith 

This is the 7th book in the Arkady Renko series by Martin Cruz Smith. In this book, Arkady is a prosecutor's investigator in Moscow but does not have any current cases because he always causes problems, no matter what he investigates. He decides to help his friend and former partner, Victor Orlov, with his current case, the death of a prostitute by drug overdose. My review here.

She Came Back (1945) by Patricia Wentworth

Lady Anne Jocelyn was thought to have died over three years before, but one day she shows up at the door of her husband's home and announces her return. Sir Phillip Jocelyn, her husband, claims that she is an impostor. This is a book in the Miss Silver series, but she doesn't show up until midway in the book, as usual. My review here.

Booked for a Hanging (1992) by Bill Crider

From the dust jacket: "The versatile mystery novelist Bill Crider has created a pantheon of marvelous characters, but none is more real, warm, and thoroughly delightful than Sheriff Dan Rhodes of Claflin County, Texas. In his sixth adventure, Rhodes is confronted with what seems at first to be a suicide: the body of a man newly arrived in the county is found hanged in the dilapidated building he has taken over for his business. Simon Graham was a rare-book dealer." Another wonderful entry in the Sheriff Dan Rhodes series.

READING NEXT?

I am currently reading H.M.S. Surprise by Patrick O'Brian and A Killing Spring by Gail Bowen. 

Next I might read On Her Majesty's Secret Service by Ian Fleming or Lockdown by  Peter May or The Art of Violence by S. J. Rozan.

This photo shows plants in containers in our back yard. The photo at the top of the post was taken at the plant nursery we use. Photos were taken by my husband.

The Travelers: Chris Pavone

The Washington Post describes The Travelers as a Hitchcockian thriller, and points to similar elements in two of Hitchcock's films, Notorious and North by Northwest. I would agree with that assessment. Both of those films are about a reluctant person caught up in espionage.

Will Rhodes is the main character in The Travelers. He has been married to Chloe for four years and it is obvious that their marriage has problems, although they love each other. They are remodeling their house and trying to have a baby. Will works for a company called Travelers that publishes a travel magazine (also called Travelers). The magazine appears to be doing very well financially in these times when most print magazines are going under. The story focuses primarily on Will's life, his job, his problems. 

Will travels a lot. Chloe, his wife, previously worked for Travelers. Now she contributes some freelance articles to the magazine, but has moved to a different job. Chloe also travels for her job, and they don't see much of each other. We know that she objected to Will joining the staff of Travelers, and the reason is not clear.

Fairly early in the book, Will is blackmailed into becoming an asset for the CIA. His job is the perfect cover for that type of work. From that time on, he is miserable, having to lie to his wife and at work, living a double life. 

My thoughts:

I came into this book intentionally not knowing anything about it. I had read the author's two previous books, The Expats and The Accident. All three of the books have some focus on espionage in the story. I did not like this book as well as the first two books, but it was still a very good story and an enjoyable read.

The writing style of The Travelers could be confusing to some readers. The chapters are very short, and the story jumps from character to character, place to place, all over the world. Sometimes the events are told in a linear fashion, and other times the story goes back to an earlier event to provide more information. The book is written in present tense; this time I did not notice it that much.

I liked the short chapters and even the hopping around from character to character, but the author withholds a lot of information, and most of the time he leaves the reader in the dark too long. Maybe that would have worked better with a shorter book. 

The story goes from the USA to France to Argentina in quick succession, and there are also visits to the UK, Italy, and Iceland. I got the best feel for Iceland in this book; several locations are visited and described in some detail.

The story is very fast paced, and I think that is why it works. I never stopped trying to figure out what was going on. The ending was somewhat ambiguous, but I was happy with it.

 -----------------------------

Publisher:  Broadway Books, 2017 (orig. pub. 2016)
Length:      433 pages
Format:     Trade paperback
Setting:      USA, France, Argentina, UK, Italy, Iceland
Genre:       Thriller
Source:      Purchased in 2020.

The Accident: Chris Pavone

Having loved Chris Pavone's first novel, The Expats, I was eager to try another of his books. I soon purchased the second book he wrote, The Accident, and read it at the end of March.

The Expats was a spy thriller, but it was more than that. It was about a marriage where each spouse is hiding big secrets from the other. The Accident is not spy fiction at all but the story reads like it is. And since my favorite genre is spy fiction, that worked for me.

This story is about the attempt to publish a tell-all memoir that will release information about a very powerful and rich media mogul and ruin his life. This same information will also ruin a CIA operative, who has the ability to start a manhunt for author and manuscript, in order to prevent its release.

The manuscript is first given to an agent, who passes it onto a friend and editor, who passes portions of it onto the publisher. The action takes place in one day. As in The Expats, important information related to all the people involved is revealed gradually, bit by bit.

I enjoyed the book because of its insights into the publishing industry. I worked in publishing for years but not in that area of the business and not in fiction publishing. Still, that made it personally more interesting.

And since this is about a manuscript it is a book within a book, in a sense, which I like. In this case the excerpts from the manuscript were brief and sprinkled throughout the book. I found it a very effective storytelling technique.

Although this is not a sequel to The Expats, two characters from that book do show up. Kate, the protagonist of The Expats, has a minor role as an assistant to Hayden Gray, the CIA operative who is chasing after the author and his manuscript. Hayden had a minor role in Pavone's first book, but his role is much more prominent here. However, knowledge of the previous book is not necessary at all. This is a standalone.

I would mostly categorize this as a fun thriller read, but there was plenty of loss of life in the effort to cover up the facts in the manuscript, and most of this happened to innocent people. There was a point at which that got depressing.

A minor negative factor is that the story is written in the present tense, which I usually don't like. In this case, for the most part, that did not bother me.


 -----------------------------

Publisher:  Broadway Books, 2015 (orig. pub. 2014)
Length:      416 pages
Format:     Paperback
Setting:      USA, mostly; also Zurich and Copenhagen
Genre:       Thriller
Source:      Purchased this year.

Monthly Summary, May 2020

I read eight books this month and I reviewed five of them before putting up my monthly summary. That is an achievement for me. Probably not one I will continue with, because I have so many reviews from earlier in the year that I haven't done for challenges. Oh well.

I read two books from my Classics Club list, The Master and Margarita and And Then There Were None. Five books were from my TBR pile, two were borrowed from my husband, and one book I bought in March of this year.

And here is my list of books...

General Fiction

The Provincial Lady in America (1934)
by E.M. Delafield

I wrote a post on the first three Provincial Lady books, including this one, here. They are all written in diary form and are a lot of fun to read.

The Master and Margarita (1966)
by Mikhael Bulgakov
Translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

This is a Russian classic novel written in the 1930's and finished shortly before the author died in 1940, at the age of 49. The novel was finally published in Russia in 1966. It combines humor with magical realism and was a difficult read for me. My review here.

Science Fiction

The Collapsing Empire (2017) by John Scalzi

This is the first book in a science fiction trilogy about an empire of worlds connected by travel via The Flow. See my review here.

Crime Fiction

The Awkward Squad (2015) by Sophie Hénaff
Translated from the French by Sam Gordon

A police detective, Anne Capestan, has been suspended for six months and expects her superior, Buron, to end her employment. Instead he gives her a new department made up of misfits and rejects from other areas; the mission is to follow up on unsolved cases. This premise sounds similar to that of The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen (set in Denmark). This one is set in France, and it is more humorous in tone. 

And Then There Were None (1939) by Agatha Christie

Ten strangers are invited to an isolated island mansion by a mysterious unknown person who identifies himself as "U.N. Owen." See my review. When I posted my review I had completely forgotten that I purchased a copy of the facsimile first edition, so I am sharing that image here. 

Fearless Jones (2001) by Walter Mosley

First book in the Fearless Jones series. My review here.

The Accident (2014) by Chris Pavone

In March of this year, I read The Expats by Chris Pavone. I loved that book, and looked for Pavone's second book immediately. I had the same reaction to this book. I liked this book for its insights into the publishing industry. A group of people is  trying to suppress the publication of a manuscript. This isn't specifically spy fiction but it certainly reads like it, and the hunt to track down the manuscript is headed by a CIA operative.

At Risk (2004) by Stella Rimington

Liz Carlyle is an MI5 officer working in counterintelligence. In this first book in the series, she is provided information on possible terrorist activity in her area. The author was director general of MI5, so one assumes that she knows the subject. I liked it and will continue the series.

March 2020 Reading Summary

In March, most of my reads were crime fiction (and spy fiction, which I include under that umbrella).  I also read two books of historical fiction and a classic novel from the 1930s.

As the month wore on and the coronavirus situation got more scary, my reading leaned more to the comfort books. For me, spy fiction is included in comfort reading, so my reading of that genre may increase.

General Fiction 

Diary of a Provincial Lady (1930) by E.M. Delafield

This book is a satirical and humorous look at the life of a married woman with two children (and a cook, a French governess/nanny, and a maid or two), living in an English village, and dealing with money problems and the foibles of others. The diary format took some getting used to, but I liked it, and I am reading The Provincial Lady in London right now.

Historical Fiction

Bring Up the Bodies (2012) by Hilary Mantel

This is the sequel to Mantel's Wolf Hall; it explores the downfall of Anne Boleyn, from the viewpoint of Thomas Cromwell. I liked this book even better than Wolf Hall.

Margaret the First (2016) by Danielle Dutton

This very short novel tells the story of Margaret Cavendish, an unconventional 17th-century Duchess who dared to write and publish all types of literature when it was unthinkable for women to do this. I enjoyed the story very much, and learned more about those times.

Crime Fiction

A Quiet Place (1975) by Seichō Matsumoto

Crime fiction set in Japan, by a Japanese author. This book portrays culture and working life in Japan in the 1970s very well. My review here.

The Expats (2012) by Chris Pavone

A spy fiction thriller set in Luxembourg, although not your standard spy fiction story. I loved it. My review here.

Rest in Pieces (1992) by Rita Mae Brown

This is part of a mystery series that features a cat (Mrs. Murphy) and a dog (Tucker) as characters (in addition to humans). Not my usual type of mystery, but I enjoyed it. My review here.

Miss Silver Deals with Death (1944) by Patricia Wentworth

Miss Silver #6. As I noted in my review, this book has one of my favorite  settings for a mystery... London during World War II. And the mystery story is well done too.

October Men (1973) by Anthony Price

This is the fourth book in the David Audley series, a cold war espionage series set in the UK (and sometimes other countries) and usually featuring some historical element. In this case, Audley is in Italy. Although Audley is the central character throughout the series, each book is different and may place the focus on other characters. My review here.

Snow Angels (2009) by James Thompson

This is the first novel in the Inspector Vaara series. A very interesting setting: Finnish Lapland, a hundred miles into the Arctic Circle. There was too much violence, described graphically, for me. My review here.

The Second Confession (1949) and
In the Best Families (1950) by Rex Stout

When I embarked on comfort reading this month, Rex Stout was one of the first authors to come to mind. These two books are books 2 and 3 in the Zeck Trilogy; And Be a Villain is book 1 in the trilogy. Arnold Zeck is Nero Wolfe's archenemy, and in these two books Wolfe encounters Zeck once again.  

Dark Provenance (1994) by Michael David Anthony

Second book in the Canterbury Cathedral series. The protagonist, Richard Harrison, is an ex-Intelligence Officer who has taken on the position of Secretary of the Diocesan Dilapidations Board for Canterbury. By coincidence, a man he worked with in Germany at the end of the war is found dead nearby, and that man's daughter refuses to believe it is suicide. I enjoy these books more for the picture of life at Canterbury Cathedral than the mystery; this book was a good read.

Coffin in Malta (1964) by Gwendoline Butler

I read my first John Coffin novel earlier this year and enjoyed it very much. This book takes Coffin to Malta to investigate a crime and, like the earlier book I read, it features Coffin only later in the book.

Tiger in the Smoke (1952) by Margery Allingham

Albert Campion #14. Set in London a few years after the end of World War II, this is more of a thriller than the typical detective novel that Campion is involved with. My review here.

The Expats: Chris Pavone

I bought this book in 2013 at the book sale, and I only read it this month because it is set in Luxembourg and it would be a good choice for the European Reading Challenge. After waiting all that time, I loved the book. I had forgotten that The Expats is a spy story. It is a lot more than that, but at its core we have the secrets, the mistrust, and the tension of a spy story, and it was perfect for me.

The main character, Kate, was a CIA agent for many years. She has been married to Dexter for several years and they have two sons (four and five). Suddenly, one day, Dexter suggests that they move to Luxembourg because he has a new job there. Kate leaves her job behind and becomes a full-time mother.

The only character we get to know well is Kate. The story is told from her point of view, but not in first person. Dexter is kind of a cipher and I think that is intentional, to keep the reader guessing. This is also very much a story about a full-time stay-at-home mother. Kate has made the transition from full-time job (with a nanny to care for the kids) to being with them every hour that they are not in school, which at this point is preschool. Her husband is much less available in his new job and travels a lot.

It soon becomes obvious that Kate had some kind of hush-hush job and also had a bad experience shortly before she left the job. The slow reveal of what she did formerly and the major event that is troubling her is very well done. This is followed by multiple revelations about her husband, the reason behind their move to Luxembourg, and some new friends they met after moving to Luxembourg.

The story switches between two timelines. The story is framed by short segments throughout the book that are set in the current time and written in present tense, but most of the story centers on what happened two years before when Kate and Dexter moved to Luxembourg and is written in past tense. It is clear which time frame we are in because of the typeface and the tense, and this worked very well for me, but it could get confusing.

I liked the way that Pavone gets across the conflict between being a working mom and a stay-at-home mom. This is one of those issues in life that may have no good answer (depending on the person and the amount of money available), but the pull of wanting to be with your kids and be a part of their lives versus having responsibilities and a life (and money) of your own is difficult to deal with, and I think he shows that very well.

Setting:
I did learn a lot about Luxembourg. It is a grand duchy bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany. What is really interesting is that the language spoken there is Luxembourgish, which Dexter describes as "a Germanic dialect, with French tossed in." German, French and English are also spoken there.

About the author:
It is strange to read a book about a full-time mother feeling overwhelmed by her lack of privacy and time for herself that is written by a man. After finishing the book I read a couple of articles about how a similar thing happened to Chris Pavone. His wife got a very good job working in Luxembourg and he was the stay-at-home dad, doing the washing, adjusting to an entirely new environment with no friends around, going to the park with his kids and chatting with the mothers who brought their kids. So that is one reason he got it so right.

The Expats was published in 2012 and was Chris Pavone's first novel. It won the 2013 Edgar Award for best first novel by an American author. He has published three more novels:

• The Accident (2014).
• The Travelers (2016).
• The Paris Diversion (2019). A sequel to The Expats, but written so that it can be read as a standalone novel, according to this article at Shots Ezine.

See also these reviews at Clothes in Books, BooksPlease, and Finding Time to Write.


 -----------------------------

Publisher:  Broadway Paperbacks, 2013 (orig. pub. 2012)
Length:      326 pages
Format:     Trade Paperback
Series:       Kate Moore, #1
Setting:      Luxembourg, mostly
Genre:       Thriller, Spy fiction
Source:      Purchased at the Planned Parenthood book sale, 2013.