As dawn approaches in New York, literary agent Isabel Reed is turning the final pages of a mysterious, anonymous manuscript, racing through the explosive revelations about powerful people, as well as long-hidden secrets about her own past. In Copenhagen, veteran CIA operative Hayden Gray, determined that this sweeping story be buried, is suddenly staring down the barrel of an unexpected gun. And in Zurich, the author himself is hiding in a shadowy expat life, trying to atone for a lifetime’s worth of lies and betrayals with publication of The Accident, while always looking over his shoulder.
Over the course of one long, desperate, increasingly perilous day, these lives collide as the book begins its dangerous march toward publication, toward saving or ruining careers and companies, placing everything at risk—and everyone in mortal peril. The rich cast of characters—in publishing and film, politics and espionage—are all forced to confront the consequences of their ambitions, the schisms between their ideal selves and the people they actually became.
The action rockets around Europe and across America, with an intricate web of duplicities stretching back a quarter-century to a dark winding road in upstate New York, where the shocking truth about the accident itself is buried.
Gripping, sophisticated, layered, and impossible to put down, The Accident proves once again that Chris Pavone is a true master of suspense.
Hardcover, 336 pages
Expected publication:
March 11th 2014
by Crown
Terri's Thoughts:
I received this ARC as part of a Goodreads giveaway in exchange for an honest review. The expected publication is March 2014.
This was an intricately woven story about the lengths a powerful person will take to stop the release of a harmful tell all book for reaching the public that takes place over the course of one day. The story was divided in to three sections; morning, afternoon and evening.
I struggled a little bit with the morning section of the story as I found there were numerous characters introduced and I had a hard time keeping track of them all and their relevance to the storyline. This part of the novel took me the longest to get through. By the afternoon and evening sections I was comfortable with all the moving pieces and flew through the pages.
While lacking some believability in the context of the real world (at least I hope so) this was a suspenseful read where the multiple characters and storylines intersected in to a well written story that kept my interest. While it is obvious how some of the connections are made between the characters without it being said so until late in the story the conclusion was not easy to predict and therefore made it a worthwhile read. I am impressed with how Pavone was able to chart out the plot he did that takes the reader around the world.
There are two aspects of this read that really fascinated me. The first being how Pavone profiled New York. There was a lot of description regarding the city of New York and as someone who has visited on a few occasions I found it fascinating to read about places and areas of the city that I recognized. It is clear that he is intimately familiar with the city and I enjoyed the descriptive profile of it in the story. The second part was how it profiled the publishing world. I am assuming that the publishing world and process' mirrors the real world and I enjoyed getting an inside glimpse. As an avid reader and blogger I only get the opportunity to buy the books and review them. This gave a glimpse in to the process that occurs before the novels hit the bookshelves. I really appreciated this inside view.
All in all a good solid read. It was a little bit longer than probably required and there were a couple of spelling and grammatical errors however that is to be expected with an ARC. I would recommend this read to anyone who enjoys conspiracy theories and suspense.
Website: http://www.chrispavone.com/
I agree about the ponderous first section. I also felt that none of the characters was very likeable, although I softened toward Isobel after I knew about her son.
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