book review 2 nights in lisbon

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Her Husband Is Kidnapped. Then Things Start to Go Downhill.

The heroine of Chris Pavone’s new thriller, “Two Nights in Lisbon,” learns that double lives can have hidden costs.

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By Janet Maslin

TWO NIGHTS IN LISBON By Chris Pavone 436 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $28.

It’s been 10 years since Chris Pavone made his showstopping thriller debut with “The Expats,” a book so twisty and offbeat that it established his spy stories as unmissable. His tricks were exotic then, but through four subsequent books they’ve become familiar. He likes strong, sneaky heroines. Fake identities. Married characters who keep secrets from their spouses. Intricate espionage. Touristy settings. Enough far-fetched subplots to make heads spin.

With each new effort, Pavone’s novelty value has diminished. And he mentions in his acknowledgments that his latest, “Two Nights in Lisbon,” has been through many drafts. If the headlong narrative brio that propelled “The Expats” though Luxembourg has waned, perhaps that’s because Pavone’s latest protagonist, Ariel Pryce, is so fretful and talky. She’s not much like the first book’s Kate Moore, who played decorative wife when she had to but could also crawl onto a window ledge and into a stranger’s locked bedroom when necessary.

Pavone still has game. He’ll dupe any reader who takes the plot of “Two Nights in Lisbon” at face value. This story nominally starts once Ariel awakens after a night of wild passion to find that her husband, a dashing businessman named John Wright, has disappeared. He left their Lisbon hotel while she was sleeping. She has no idea why.

John is much younger than Ariel. They haven’t been married long. And he seemed perfect to Ariel, who may herself be a cipher. She has lived at least two different lives under two different names and kept them separate, or so the book tells us. “When someone seems too good to be true,” Pavone writes, “he’s not.”

Thus begin Ariel’s efforts to figure out who she married. And why he has apparently been kidnapped. She is not eager to deal with the local police, let alone the higher international authorities that eventually take an interest in John’s vanishing. But she’s stranded in Portugal, John’s personal history seems confounding and she needs to figure out what happened to him. So several layers of law enforcement are introduced into the story.

In a maneuver that tangles his book significantly, Pavone gives it a time span much longer than the “two nights” of the title. It flashes back frequently to Ariel’s past lives and earlier incarnations. Most recently she ran a bookstore in a small town and lived on a farm with her son and a lot of animals; this is the kind of book in which even a pet goat named Fletcher may have a secret. In any case, the flashbacks persuade us that Ariel is at least as mysterious as John.

Pavone risks whipsawing the reader as he springs surprise after surprise about how these two got to Portugal and what they were really up to. And he trots out a villainous character from an earlier book to cast a shadow over this one, which feels like recycling. Anyway, a lot of energy goes into the idea that John was kidnapped and Ariel must raise a ransom. The search for help leads her to a shadowy figure she knows and abhors.

“Two Nights in Lisbon” strays so far from its original setup that it feels like more than one book. Most of what we know about Ariel casts her as a relatively conventional figure, but Pavone ratchets up his story to create impossibly high stakes. There is contemporary political resonance in the real story he’s telling. There’s a strong emphasis on abused women and the world’s refusal to take them seriously. Ariel has experienced victimhood throughout her multiple lives, and the author has trouble balancing her obvious strength with her history of having been exploited. You could argue that this matters to the book’s denouement or just deem it hard to buy.

Pavone strongly argues against the strictures that can shield powerful predators from repercussions. And he makes an important plot point out of Ariel’s enforced secrecy. He is setting up a whopper of an ending, one that may be too much for even his most devoted readers, who have had to grapple with the implausible before. He built “The Accident,” which overlaps with this book, around the idea of a tell-all manuscript so dangerous that it imperils whoever has it. While reading that book you had to believe such a manuscript could be real. What he asks us to accept this time is even more extreme.

Although Pavone fans may find “Two Nights in Lisbon” quite a stretch, this smart, calculating author remains many notches above others in his field. He is worldly and inviting when it comes to the book’s mostly European settings. His book captures a vacation’s escapism even as its heroine feels walls closing in. And his smaller scenes, like those set in Ariel’s bookstore, feel much less forced than his high-stakes ones. It’s a nice touch to say that the bookstore, with its coffee and greeting cards, does “a brisk business in banal.” Ariel can be accused of many things, but banality isn’t one.

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Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

Kirkus Reviews' Best Books Of 2022

New York Times Bestseller

TWO NIGHTS IN LISBON

by Chris Pavone ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 24, 2022

This high-stakes drama grabs your attention and doesn’t let go.

Secrets, lies, and revenge permeate this taut international thriller.

The recently married Ariel Pryce wakes up one morning in a Lisbon hotel room, expecting her husband, John Wright, to be in bed beside her. He isn’t. She looks for a note, tries calling him, queries hotel staff, all to no avail. She calls Portuguese police and then the American Embassy, who wonder at first if Ms. Pryce isn’t some crazy lady wasting everyone’s time. But a lot happens muito rápido: Ariel receives a ransom demand for 3 million euros to be delivered within 48 hours for John’s safe release by unknown captors. The CIA knows that John is not who he claims to be and thinks that Ariel "must be more important than she’s letting on.” For one thing, she changed her name from Laurel Turner in her adulthood. A nosy American reporter starts poking around. Moving between past and present and among the viewpoints of Ariel and her several observers, Pavone uses short scenes to build fast-paced tension. Who is behind the kidnapping, and why? Ariel isn’t rich, and there’s only one way—blackmail—to come up with the dough. She and her extortee can inflict great harm on each other, and in fact one of them had a head start years earlier. So will she get the cash and rescue John? Then suspicious polícia stop Ariel from boarding a flight to the U.S., the CIA monitors her calls, at least one CIA observer ponders the value of having her whacked, and a relentless, coke-sniffing reporter is convinced he smells a blockbuster scoop. Surprise builds on surprise, and although the reader may sense where the complicated plot is headed, the twists keep coming. Two nights in Lisbon sound like a fun vacation as long as someone isn’t trying to uncover a horrible secret from your past.

Pub Date: May 24, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-3746-0476-9

Page Count: 448

Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022

MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | SUSPENSE | THRILLER | INTERNATIONAL CRIME | SUSPENSE | GENERAL & DOMESTIC THRILLER | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | GENERAL FICTION

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by Chris Pavone

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PERSPECTIVES

by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).

A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.

Pub Date: June 16, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine

Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020

GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SCIENCE FICTION

More by Max Brooks

by Max Brooks

BOOK TO SCREEN

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE DEVLINS

by Lisa Scottoline ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 26, 2024

As an adjunct member says, “You’re not a family, you’re a force.” Exactly, though not in the way you’d expect.

The ne’er-do-well son of a successful Irish American family gets dragged into criminal complications that suggest the rest of the Devlins aren’t exactly the upstanding citizens they appear.

The first 35 years in the life of Thomas “TJ” Devlin have been one disappointment after another to his parents, lawyers who founded a prosperous insurance and reinsurance firm, and his more successful siblings, John and Gabby. A longtime alcoholic who’s been unemployable ever since he did time for an incident involving his ex-girlfriend Carrie’s then 2-year-old daughter, TJ is nominally an investigator for Devlin & Devlin, but everyone knows the post is a sinecure. Things change dramatically when golden-boy John tells TJ that he just killed Neil Lemaire, an accountant for D&D client Runstan Electronics. Their speedy return to the murder scene reveals no corpse, so the brothers breathe easier—until Lemaire turns up shot to death in his car. John’s way of avoiding anything that might jeopardize his status as heir apparent to D&D is to throw TJ under the bus, blaming him for everything John himself has done and adding that you can’t trust anything his brother has said since he’s fallen off the wagon. TJ, who’s maintained his sobriety a day at a time for nearly two years, feels outraged, but neither the police investigating the murder nor his nearest and dearest care about his feelings. Forget the forgettable mystery, whose solution will leave you shrugging instead of gasping, and focus on the circular firing squad of the Devlins, and you’ll have a much better time than TJ.

Pub Date: March 26, 2024

ISBN: 9780525539704

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024

SUSPENSE | THRILLER | SUSPENSE | CRIME & LEGAL THRILLER | PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE

More by Lisa Scottoline

by Lisa Scottoline

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What readers think of Two Nights in Lisbon, plus links to write your own review.

Summary  |  Excerpt  |  Reading Guide  |  Reviews  |  Beyond the book  |  Read-Alikes  |  Genres & Themes  |  Author Bio

Two Nights in Lisbon

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Book Review: Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone

Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone is about a woman named Ariel Pryce waking up alone in her Lisbon hotel room, and her husband is no where to be found in the hotel.  Panicking, Ariel reaches out to the local police and the American Embassy, but they aren't of much help.  Who would want to harm her husband?

First and foremost, I'd like to thank NetGalley for the Advanced Readers Copy (ARC) of Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone in exchange for my honest review.  I was excited to receive this book, especially since I'm a fan of the author's writing. Chris Pavone weaved an intriguing story in Two Nights in Lisbon that had twists and turns galore that left me guessing until the very end.  I found myself rooting for the main character and loved the fact that all the loose ends were wrapped up so there were no cliffhangers.  I enjoyed the fact that the storyline switched back and forth between the present and past . . . making this novel a bit of a slow burn.  

There was really only one big complaint that I have about this novel.  I don't like it when the author has an unreliable narrator because it makes it difficult to guess what will happen.  Four out of five stars is what I gave Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone, and I can't wait to see what he writes next.

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Two nights in lisbon by chris pavone [book review].

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Title: Two Nights in Lisbon

Author: Chris Pavone

Publisher: MCD

Publish Date: May 24, 2022

Genre: Mystery Thriller

My Rating: 3/5

You think you know a person . . . Ariel Pryce wakes up in Lisbon, alone. Her husband is gone—no warning, no note, not answering his phone. Something is wrong. She starts with hotel security, then the police, then the American embassy, at each confronting questions she can’t fully answer: What exactly is John doing in Lisbon? Why would he drag her along on his business trip? Who would want to harm him? And why does Ariel know so little about her new—much younger—husband? The clock is ticking. Ariel is increasingly frustrated and desperate, running out of time, and the one person in the world who can help is the one person she least wants to ask.

Ariel and her husband, John, travel to Lisbon on one of his business trips. One morning, Ariel wakes up, and her husband is gone. She contacts local authorities, but she is unable to answer some of their questions. When Ariel gets a ransom demand for John, she has to come up with the money, and that means turning to someone she was hoping to never have contact with again.

Two Nights in Lisbon has a complex and multilayered plot that took time to build. The twists and turns were unexpected, which is always enjoyable. A good read for fans of tense and suspenseful thrillers.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone

• Publication Date: May 2, 2023
• Genres: Fiction , Suspense , Thriller
• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Picador
• ISBN-10: 1250872308
• ISBN-13: 9781250872302
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