I recently had the opportunity to read Chris Pavone’s The Travelers, a spy thriller and a great example for anyone living on the edge of morality not sure if their actions can or will have consequences.

Will Rhodes is living on the edge and makes a costly mistake after making every attempt, well, a fair attempt, to keep from being persuaded to do something he should not. It is succumbing to that temptation that gives this story it’s thrust. The bad guys trick him and then begin to make him do their bidding, or else what he did will get out.

Mix on top of that the questionable operations of his employer and you have a four-hundred page thriller that leaps from one continent to another with guns, knives and bad guys a step ahead or behind, depending on where in the story one is.

Largely this is a page turner that hangs its hat on a couple of basic principles—obviously the one noted above—what can happen if you’re unfaithful to your spouse in a world of spies when your wife is a spy and you don’t know it—but the application is there for all regardless.

Pavone also explores the essence of society on page 208:

“Everyone is acting all the time.  Smiling and laughing, great to meet you, that’s awesome. Wearing this and not that, keeping quiet when you want to scream, saying things you know aren’t true. You do it every day … and you did it before you ever met me. We all dot. That’s what keeps society going. That’s what life is. Acting.”

“Organizations are like organisms. They have deeply ingrained survival instincts. Which isn’t surprising, is it? After all, organizations are made up of people, and people are motivated by self-interest. We’re all self-preservationists. First and foremost, what people want is what’s best for themselves. We want to survive, we want to flourish. We get jobs, then we develop loyalty to our employers, and our loyalty helps our employers achieve success, which in turn help people survive. It’s a symbiotic relationship.”

“The vast majority of espionage is committed for a very simple reason: money.”

The book obviously has some darker perspectives on humans in general, and that’s what helps supply the gasoline for the fire this book burns.

I don’t regularly read thrillers like this because I normally read books that seem to have more to say, but I read the book in the matter of a few days and am glad I did. If you’re headed to the beach in the next few months and need something that will keep you company in the sand, this is a great book to take with you.

ABOUT THE TRAVELERS

A pulse-racing international thriller from the New York Timesbestselling author of The Expats and The Accident

It’s 3:00am. Do you know where your husband is?

Meet Will Rhodes: travel writer, recently married, barely solvent, his idealism rapidly giving way to disillusionment and the worry that he’s living the wrong life. Then one night, on assignment for the award-winning Travelers magazine in the wine region of Argentina, a beautiful woman makes him an offer he can’t refuse. Soon Will’s bad choices—and dark secrets—take him across Europe, from a chateau in Bordeaux to a midnight raid on a Paris mansion, from a dive bar in Dublin to a mega-yacht in the Mediterranean and an isolated cabin perched on the rugged cliffs of Iceland. As he’s drawn further into a tangled web of international intrigue, it becomes clear that nothing about Will Rhodes was ever ordinary, that the network of deception ensnaring him is part of an immense and deadly conspiracy with terrifying global implications—and that the people closest to him may pose the greatest threat of all.

It’s 3:00am. Your husband has just become a spy.

“I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.”