Luxembourg was just unfamiliar enough to lend an air of suspicion to the supposedly blah activities in which Pavone’s “expats” engaged. Relocated from Washington, D.C., they were Dexter Moore, who did something vague involving computer technology, and his wife, Kate, who had worked for the State Department. Kate was now a bored housewife, except that she was really a spy.
Now, in his fourth novel, “The Paris Diversion,” Pavone has decided to make “The Expats” a series, Kate its heroine and Paris its latest setting. If this sounds abrupt, it should. He has laid only the flimsiest groundwork for such a drastic swivel. “The Expats” was so intricate that it is essential to read it before tackling the sequel. If you pick up “The Paris Diversion” cold, you’ll spend a lot of time wondering who the Moores are, what happened to them in Luxembourg (not to mention what happened during Kate’s long career in espionage before she married Dexter) and what residue of problems and enemies are brought to this touristy new book.
“The Paris Diversion” provides an unearned frisson from the fact that its sections are named for Paris’ most famous places, with accompanying photos. One, of course, is Notre Dame, pictured here in all its undamaged glory and used by Pavone in the most gimmicky way. The Eiffel Tower, the Champs-Élysées and the Louvre provide other picture-postcard backdrops for the book’s plot. There are also visits to Venice and an aerial view of the Matterhorn. If you’re the kind of reader who thinks such touches need justification, this book is not for you.
With its events confined to the space of a single business day, the book stages a couple of horrendous crises. First, there is a multi-phased terrorist takeover of the plaza outside the Louvre, which leaves tourists running and screaming, with a stereotypically Islamic-looking man standing alone in the vast space with a stereotypical suitcase bomb chained to his wrist. Without spoilers it is impossible to offer an appraisal of the way this tactic is used — by the characters and, more important, by the author.
Second, there are the smooth moves by which an arrogant CEO and his too-beautiful young assistant are whisked out of their office and off to a secure location — on the very day that the CEO’s company stands to generate a great deal of money for its investors. A lot is riding on the pair’s whereabouts. Yet hours pass and they are not heard from ... and there had better be something really major going on here, hadn’t there? The idea that the key word in “The Paris Diversion” is “diversion,” and that we are being put through something very petty, is just unthinkable.
“The Paris Diversion” does have a tight, extremely clever bit of exposition, in which all its diverse pieces suddenly fall into place and its many red herrings are exposed as empty trickery. But it comes much too late to compensate for the fact that Pavone has given readers an elaborate house of cards, not a scheme built on anything substantial.
Dexter doesn’t loom that large in the book’s machinations. But Kate must carry most of it on her duplicitous shoulders. She stays active, and uses up a lot of verbs in the process. She scouts, sizes up, remembers, secures (her job, which has been in peril), rushes toward (a bomb everyone else in Paris is fleeing), realizes, foils, avenges and otherwise stays astonishingly busy. If only the book could match her energy level.
Pavone can do so much more with her. He has been well worth reading since “The Expats,” through both “The Accident” (2014) and “The Travelers” (2016), because of his exceptional plotting and pacing. This is his first eyebrow-raiser. Building a series around Kate Moore seems like a fine idea. She started out as a skilled professional, and Pavone began by winning an Edgar Award for Best First Novel. But he and Kate need to do more than blow smoke.
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Publication Notes:
‘The Paris Diversion’
By Chris Pavone
373 pages. Crown. $27.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.