Chris Pavone

Chris Pavone grew up in Brooklyn and graduated from Cornell. For nearly two decades he was a book editor and ghostwriter.

The Expats is his first novel.

From his Q & A with Paul Goat Allen at Publishers Weekly:

After your wife’s job took you to Luxembourg, do you remember the moment when you realized that it would make a perfect setting for a spy thriller?

I was sitting in a playground, watching my kids, chatting with expat stay-at-home mothers; this was my life. These were people from England and Sweden and America, ex-programmers and ex-chefs and ex-therapists. But this one woman clearly didn’t want to tell me what it is she used to do. Maybe she had something to hide, some big secret? Everyone has secrets, and I think some people flee from home—far from home—to try to keep those secrets. Maybe she was one of those people. Maybe she was a spy.

During your time there, was the community of expatriates as tightly knit as described in the novel?

If anything, the expat community was more tightly knit than I describe. Expats are a self-selecting group of outgoing, confident people—if you’re not those things, you probably don’t choose this adventure—and the lifestyle is very conducive to making fast, close friends. And in truth I began writing a very different...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Chris Pavone's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Expats.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Chris Pavone & Charlie Brown.

--Marshal Zeringue