The Paris Diversion

by Chris Pavone (Faber & Faber, $32.99 Reviewed by Ken Strongman

The action of The Paris Diversion takes place throughout the course of a single day in Paris. In an intricate melange it involves bomb threats, a suicide bomber standing outside the Louvre, various levels of high finance, complex scams and a rather droll, intrepid, very professional woman – Kate Moore – who runs the Paris office of some shadowy American spy network.

Pavone (this is his fourth book) writes in a way that pulls you through the pages at some speed. It’s hard to break away from but easy to pick up again. At one level it is simply about a cleverly devised plot, twisting, turning and surprising most satisfactorily, partly based on the contrivances of the world of finance, trickery to put pressure on the markets and so forth.

It might well be my own lack of experience in this area, but I could never actually work out precisely what was going on and whether the skulduggery had succeeded. It remained plausible if I did not overthink things.

The Paris Diversion is also about characters and there are plenty of them. They are convincing, from the dying suicide bomber to the flics on the street. From an ultra-rich financier to the inadequate Dex,

Kate’s husband who is no match for her, in spite of what he thinks.

Kate herself is a compelling character, full of self-doubt and self-recrimination but proving to be increasingly competent, even in combat – armed and unarmed.

There is, then, something for everyone in this rapid romp of a book. And because of this it should be highly recommended for a few hours of honest escapism.

But, for this reader, the writing seems to have been done at a distance from the characters, almost as though it were a work of non-fiction. One rarely gets to know what the characters think and feel about what besets them.

Consider this: ‘‘Kate never did pull her trigger tonight. It wasn’t Kate who shot anyone on the quay. And she never will again.’’ The entire book passes with this type of description, much of it in the present tense.

‘‘He hoists himself off the floor, looks out the window.’’ The characters all do quite interesting things but one is never allowed to penetrate far into their psychological make-up.

For readers old enough to remember the adventure writer Hammond Innes, the style of

The Paris Diversion is similar to his. The action is there but all going on at a distance. If you don’t mind this, then you might well think it a first-rate book.