Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

How and why this novel won the 2013 Edgar for Best First Novel by an American Author is the greatest mystery of all. I have to wonder if the award was intended to be an insiders' joke on the reading public by the publishing industry. The recognition has to be based on Chris Pavone having once been an editor rather than on his mastery of storytelling and writing craft. If the Edgar award had truly been based on a newbie's display of writing craft, then three of the other nominees: Black Fridays by Michael Sears, Don't Ever Get Old by Daniel Friedman, and Mr. Churchill's Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal would have surpassed The Expats by a significant margin. The writing craft and the storytelling of those three novels are so much better than The Expats that it doesn't seem fair including The Expats in the comparison. The only logical conclusion is that the Edgar award was based on the author's long-standing relationships within the publishing industry, and not because he wrote such a great novel... which unfortunately means the award wasn't a fair competition for the other finalists. You know the old saying, "It's who you know, not what you know." I am the type of reader who will finish reading every book I begin reading, regardless of how bad it is or how disinterested I become. I started and finished four other novels, plus one non-fiction book, during the time period it took me to start and finish this one. I could only tolerate reading 3-5 pages at a time before story boredom and/or laborious writing drove me to the pages of another book. If I could, I would ask the author to reimburse the cost of this book. As for some specifics: 1) Kate was not believable as a CIA field agent, unless incompetency is part of the job requirements. 2) The plot takes forever to develop. 3) The continuous stream of flashbacks is both tedious and distracting. 4) The author wastes the reader's time with endless and wordy descriptions of routine/mundane events. As example: "It was lightly drizzling, or misting, or whatever it's called when minuscule bits of water, too fine to feel distinct drops, are drifting down out of the sky." Twenty-eight words to communicate something everyone already knows, when "it was lightly drizzling" (just four words) would've done the job just as well, in fact: better. This overly wordy style can be found on almost every page. Do the math: this novel should've been (and easily could have been) a short story of less than 100 pages rather than a 352-page, word-heavy, novel-length short story. Like I said, I think this novel and the Edgar award it received was just a joke by the publishing industry being played on the reading public. 5) The author appears to own stock in "ly" adverbs and thus uses as many of them as he possibly can on each and every page. 6) My biggest complaint is that the writing draws attention to itself, rather than to the story. Another example of poor craftsmanship: "Kate was taken aback by this excessive garrulousness." Huh? The meaning of garrulousness is "excessively talkative." Which means the author, in his desire to display his ability to overwrite, actually wrote: "Kate was taken aback by this excessive, excessive talking." It seems the author believes in the old axiom: "Why use just one word, when two will be overkill and make my writing come off as being literary?" This is only the second time I have ever given a novel a 1-star rating. I read approx. 50-55 novels each year, plus another twenty or so non-fictions. Yes, it was that bad. I would not recommend this novel to anyone, not even to my worst enemy.