I am a fan of clandestine fiction. I love Tom Clancy and other, similar stories. So when I saw The Expats, by Chris Pavone, I thought it looked pretty intriguing and decided to read it.

I was not impressed.

The story line was excellent. The plot and character development were really creative, but this story had several flaws, that, to me, seem fatal.

First of all, I had a difficult time reading the novel, simply because of the multiple occurrences of gratuitous sex. Within the first fifty pages, there were four separate times when Pavone added implicit sexual content. Each of these were completely unnecessary and added nothing to the story. Nothing at all. But at least they were implicit, and weren’t too descriptive.

However, by the end of the book, what had been implicit became explicit. The descriptions became graphic and remained completely unnecessary to the plot. Frankly, I was disgusted, and seriously contemplated setting the book aside and not finishing it.

I should have done just that. Because the remainder of the book, especially the last few pages where all the loose ends were tied up, seemed rushed and disjointed. I wondered if I were reading a Hardy Boys mystery, or watching a Scooby Doo episode, where, at the end, the bad guys tell all the explanations of why they did what they did.

That is exactly what happens in the final portion of The Expats. The four key characters sit at a cafe and the plot is explained in detail, wrapping up all the question that didn’t get answered in the rest of the book. Something like that may work for a Hardy Boys mystery, where the reader is twelve years old, but in this novel, Pavone should have answered much of that in the storyline itself. At the very least, he should have danced around these details, allowing the reader to make the necessary connections, a reader who needs to be more than twelve due to the other content present.

This is my first experience with Chris Pavone. And, unless I hear that his other books are better than this, it will be my last. I was not impressed, and there are much better things to read without adding all the unwarranted and unnecessary junk found here.

I don’t recommend that you wast time or money on this novel.

Question: Are you familiar with Chris Pavone? If so, what do you think of his novels? You can leave a comment by clicking here.

I received this book free from Waterbrook/Multnomah Media as part of their Blogging For Books blogger review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.