Book review: The Travelers

WILL RHODES lives in New York and works as a writer for The Travelers magazine.

Chris Pavone

Faber & Faber, €16.50 ebook, €6.35

On a trip to the wine-growing regions of Argentina, he is seduced by an Australian journalist called Elle.

Except she’s not Australian and she’s not a journalist. She’s an American CIA agent. Or so she says.

She recruits Will as a spy and soon he is travelling the world, identifying ‘targets’.

As he is drawn further and further into a web of international intrigue, it becomes apparent that nothing is what it seems and it all goes a bit James Bond (think cameras in tie pins, explosions and leaping from rooftops).

It’s a stretch to believe that Will, an experienced journalist whose stock in trade is cynicism and asking questions, could really be so gullible and not see that he’s being set up, and the outcome is fairly predictable, but this is nevertheless a well-written, entertaining yarn.