Author Chris Pavone is a globetrotter. Having lived abroad in Luxembourg as a book editor, Pavone eventually channeled his keen writing prowess into an espionage thriller entitled “The Expats.” Now back with a new thriller, “The Accident,” Pavone centers his indomitable mystery writing skills on a New York publishing firm that receives an anonymous manuscript threatening to reveal a shocking secret.
Pavone took time to chat with The Eagle’s David Kahen-Kashi about his new novel and some of his favorite books of the moment.
Eagle: The book takes place primarily in New York, but your last novel “The Expats” took place on a far more global stage. What was the decision to place it in a smaller environment?
Chris Pavone: I started writing “The Expats” while I was an expat, living in Luxembourg. The entire premise of the book hinges on the expat experience—leaving behind your friends and family, your entire identity and reinventing yourself abroad. “The Accident,” on the other hand, is a book about ambition and corruption, and I think New York City is the natural locus for those themes. Plus I live in New York now. That said, there are still large swaths of the new book that take place in Copenhagen, Zurich and Los Angeles with occasional scenes in London and Paris, as well as a dark winding road, long ago and late at night, near a college campus in upstate New York, scene of the accident from the book’s title.
E: How do you go about writing a novel such as “The Accident?” What kind of plotting is involved?
CP: Some novelists will tell you that an outline stifles creativity. But not me, not while I’m
writing thrillers with complicated plots. A detailed outline is my best friend, absolutely
indispensable.
E: Do you ever add any biographical details in the novels that you write?
CP: Plenty. “The Expats” was based on my experience leaving behind a career in New York to
follow my wife’s job to Luxembourg, where I became a stay-at-home parent to small
children, taking French lessons and playing tennis, cooking dinner every night and doing
laundry constantly. [I was] trying to redefine myself now that I could no longer use the identity I’d spent two decades constructing. “The Accident” draws heavily from two decades working in the book-publishing business, and is about the compromises we make on our way from the ideal people we plan on being and the real people we actually become. Both books contain honest details about my life, as well as the lives of friends and acquaintances, which I hope make the text seem more real. But both are also thrillers, with spies and crimes and guns, populated by characters who are all deceiving one another, and in the end neither book is autobiographical in a plot sense, just in an atmospheric one.
E: Do you have any influences when you decide to write a novel?
CP: I think this might be impossible for me to answer without seeming pretentious or
disingenuous, possibly even both. I’ll leave it at this: everything I read, including the books I
loathe, influences me in some way.
E: How do you know when you are finished writing and are ready to publish?
CP: I’m never finished writing, never ready to publish. But I have to give up sooner or later, or
I wouldn’t be not an author, I’d be a diarist. I rely on my literary agent to tell me when he
thinks the manuscript ready.
E: How long does it take you to finish a book?
CP: About two years per book. I hope I can maintain that pace, and that my publisher and
readers will continue to want me to.
E: If you could recommend books to our readers, what are you reading now and what are some of the favorite books you’ve read?
CP: I’ve now worked in the publishing business for a quarter-century, reading novels constantly, and my favorite books are always those I’ve enjoyed recently. In the past year, I’ve loved Donna Tartt’s new masterpiece “The Goldfinch;” the epic suite of five Patrick Melrose novels by Edward St. Aubyn; the comic mystery “The Last Word” by Lisa Lutz; and last year’s possibly perfect National Book Critics Circle Award winner, “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” by Ben Fountain. None of these has anything to do with what I write.
Chris Pavone will be at Politics & Prose to promote his novel “The Accident” on March 14 at 7 p.m.
dkahen-kashi@theeagleonline.com
