The Accident

Starred review from December 23, 2013
The contents of The Accident, a manuscript submission by an anonymous author, shock New York literary agent Isabel Reed, the heroine of Pavone's high-wire thrillerâhis second novel after 2012's well-received The Expats. Isabel worries that the revelations of this nonfiction work about Charlie Wolfe, a global media baron (think Rupert Murdoch crossed with Charles Foster Kane), pose a real danger. Her fears prove well founded as ruthless, powerful forces do whatever it takes to prevent the book's publication. The cold-blooded murder of someone close to Isabel is but the first of many. The cast of distinctive characters includes Hayden Gray, a Berlin-based "cultural attaché" (i.e., spy), who orchestrates the effort to reclaim the manuscript; Camilla Glyndon-Browning, a subsidiary-rights director who tries to shop it to Hollywood; and, of course, the anonymous author himself. Despite the far-fetched conceit, Pavone makes the story credible, and the suspense is palpable. Agent: David Gernert, Gernert Company.

October 15, 2013

Literary agent Isabel Reed has a manuscript that's fired up a pretty big crowd: her assistant, looking to shine; a rights director, looking for one last golden opportunity; a grandiose film producer; an uncertain publisher; a star editor who's Isabel's oldest, dearest friend; and a ruthless CIA operative in Copenhagen, who's determined to suppress the manuscript. Its author is a Zurich expat wanting to make amends, and the secrets spilled include some about Louise. Pavone's debut, The Expats, was a New York Times best seller and an Edgar Award winner. A repeat performance?

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2014
New York literary agent Isabel Reed plows through an anonymous manuscript in one night and immediately knows two things: The manuscript, a biography of a media mogul, will be a blockbuster, and people will die if word of its existence leaks. She's also fairly sure she knows who the author is, but he's dead. Word does leak, in New York and Hollywood, and ambitious young women in publishing quickly die violently. Isabel and her chosen editor, Jeffrey Fielder, are on the run from resourceful, relentless killers. Pavone's plot twists tirelessly, shifting focus among a large cast of well-drawn characters and using flashbacks and changes of locale (Copenhagen, Zurich, Manhattan, Hollywood, the Hamptons) to build suspense. The Accident is a somewhat more conventional thriller than Pavone's fine debut (The Expats, 2012), but he excels at developing characters' backstories. Isabel and Jeffrey, for example, are successful but frightened that changes in their business and the onset of middle age might make them has-beens, and they're both recalling the mutual attraction they once had but didn't act on. Like Isabel, many readers will read this one through the night.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)