The Expats by Chris Pavone

The Expats is a new thriller by time author Chris Pavone.  It was a quick, fun and enjoyable book. I'd quite happily pick up his next novel.  Pavone was a cookbook editor before he wrote this novel.

The Moores relocate to Luxembourg because Dexter has a new job with a bank there.  Kate leaves her public policy job in Washington D.C. and becomes a full time mother.  Unbeknownst to her husband, she in fact gave up for job with the CIA as a field operative.  The Moores are befriended by other American expats in Luxembourg.  Kate's training kicks in and she immediately suspects that the new friends are not who they say they are.  She begins to follow her intuition and uncovers layers and layers of deception.

What makes this novel a little different from the typical spy thriller is that it does not focus on any large international issues.  Rather, it is a highly personal and close up look into the mind of a spy.  Pavone does an great job of giving Kate voice and slowly revealing the facts.  There are several well executed "gotcha" moments.  Overall, it was a well executed and fun read.  The writing is crisp and easily approachable.

The interview video below was taped at The Mysterious Bookshop (my favorite bookshop in NYC).  If you jump to 3:51 and 5:19 in the video, you'll see me wandering around the bookstore.

A Study in Sherlock

Regular readers of this blog know that I love Sherlock Holmes (see for example, The Sherlockian).  When two of my favorite Sherlock Holmes authors/scholars teamed up to put together a new Sherlock Holmes anthology, I was extremely excited.  The book, A Study in Sherlock: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon, edited by Leslie Klinger and Laurie King, is terrific and a must read for Holmes devotees.

Les Klinger is a Sherlock Holmes scholar extraordinaire.  Several years ago, he published  The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories and The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Novels.  The scholarship is amazing; the books are beautiful.  Laurie King picked up the Sherlock Holmes stories from Holmes' retirement and added a new, smart, spunky partner, Mary Russell, and started a wildly successful series.  The latest installment is The Pirate King.

King and Klinger rounded up some of the best, current mystery writer talents and asked them to write a story that is inspired by the Canon.  (A list of the contributors is below.)  The writers had a lot of license.  Some of the stories are classic pastiches (stories that pattern Doyle's style).  Some of the stories are set in modern times and only loosely (but faithfully) tie to the Canon.  One story is told in the form of a blog.  Another is set in Alaska.  There is even a graphic novel short story.

If you have not read Sherlock Holmes ever, I'd highly recommend that you do.  It is the foundation of all mysteries.  Holmes is the most recognizable character in Western literature (a pipe and a deerstalker, need I say more).  Even if you have not read what Sherlockian's affectionately call the Canon (the original short stories and the novels written by Doyle), this collection is excellent and fun to read.

The contributors (and links to their websites) are as follows:
Alan Bradley
Tony Broadbent
Jan Burke
Lionel Chetwynd
Lee Child
Colin Cotterill
Neil Gaiman
Laura Lippman
Gayle Lynds and John Sheldon
Phillip Margolin and Jerry Margolin
Margaret Maron
Thomas Perry
S. J. Rozan
Dana Stabenow
Charles Todd
Jackie Winspear

A link to the book's blog is here.  Happy reading.

The Map of Time by Felix Palma

As a kid, I loved time travel. One of my favorite shows was Voyagers! (see clip below), and, of course, there was blockbuster movie, Back to the Future.  Add to time travel Victorian London, Jack the Ripper, H.G. Wells, a few other literary luminaries and a good old fashion murder mystery and you have Felix Palma's The Map of Time.  Originally written in Spanish, this is a fun, well-plotted mystery with many twists and turns.

The book opens with Andrew Harrington preparing to commit suicide because his lover was the latest victim of Jack the Ripper.  Separately, a new business, Murray's Time Travel, has recently opened and provides  customers with the opportunity (for a large fee) to travel to the year 2000 to witness man's climatic battle against the automatons.   In a third plot line, H.G. Wells (a central character in the novel) is England's most famous author, having recently published The Time Machine.  In another strand of the story, there is also Claire Haggerty, a young, independent woman constricted by the norms of Victorian society.  There are several other plot lines to the story and supporting characters (the Elephant Man, Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, Henry James, to name a few).  To avoid any spoilers, I'll won't reveal any more.  I enjoyed this book.

The book is 600+ pages.  It reads very quickly.  I could not put it down.  The prose is good although wordy at times; I assume Palma is mimicking the Victorian writing style.  Palma has fun with the issues presented by time travel (alternative worlds, altering the course of history, meeting a former iteration of yourself, creating time travel loops etc.).  Palma laces the novel with several surprises.  When I thought I had figured out where Palma was taking me, he surprised me again.


The Map of Time is a fun and exciting book.  If you are like me and find time travel and Victorian London interesting, you'll enjoy this book.

When I looked back at the Voyagers!, I found the closing tag line to each episode to be particularly apt to this blog (especially with the demise of the large bookstores):

"Take a Voyage down to your public library, it's all in books!"

Voyagers! clip

Back to the Future clip:

Conflict of Interest by Adam Mitzner

A Conflict of Interest is a first novel by Adam Mitzner.  It is a well-written legal thriller.  Reviewers have compared Mitzner to Scott Turow and John Grisham.  My friends at the Mysterious Bookshop got behind this one, and as is often the case, they got this one right.

The novel's protagonist, Alex Miller, works in a prestigious criminal defense firm.  Shortly after Alex's father passes away, a close friend of his father asks Alex to defend him in a securities fraud criminal case.  Alex accepts the representation.  In the course of that representation, Alex learns about his father, his client and himself through personal and professional tests.  From there, the action takes off.

This well-paced novel has plenty of twists and turns and well developed  characters.  The dialogue is real, the plot is believable and even the lawyering is credible.   (Mitzner is an attorney, which comes across.)  Even though this is a legal thriller (and the legal procedures appear generally right), Mitzner does not bog down the plot with too much lawyering.  This first novel is page-turner and a perfect summer read.

A video of the author discussing the book: