"The Expats", Chris Pavone

Anyone who reads here knows that we like international intrigue fiction.  This first novel is exceptional. 

Like Olen Steinhauer's involving books it still has the bravado of showing off how many places the author can write about, but in this case there is a little more reality to it.  How much? who knows.   The characters and situations attract personally as I am aware from years ago of the CIA recruiting graduates off of a D.C. campus, familiar over many trips with the area of Rue Jacob and Rue de Seine in Paris, several visits to Luxemboug in the past for inexplicable reasons, and aware at a distance of the mechanisms used to move money in international finance.

The distinctively attractive aspect of this book is that it is not at all linear.  It moves from time line to time line without respect for a reader's possible needs.  That is an aspect of the best films, one that do not offer up everything at the outset and maybe take twenty or thirty minutes for a story to unfold.  That is so unusual today, in film and in this genre of fiction.  Here it is an amazingly attractive part of reading.  Not exactly a picaresque novel of the past by any means, but at least it provides some challenges that set it apart from magazine or pulp ficition reading while trying to fall asleep.