An Expensive Education - by Nick McDonell (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

A young man goes from Ivy League to international intrigue: "A spy who could have easily walked off the pages of le Carré's better works."--Publishers Weekly

Mike Teak has a classic Harvard profile. He's a twenty-five-year-old scholar/athlete from an upper-class family who was recruited by his godfather to work for a U.S. intelligence agency. On a covert mission in a Somali village, he delivers cash and cell phones to Hatashil, a legendary orphan warrior turned rebel leader. It's a routine assignment until, minutes after they meet, the village is decimated by a missile assault, and although Mike escapes, his life is changed forever.

Echoing across continents, the assault disrupts professor Susan Lowell, who has just won a Pulitzer Prize for her book celebrating Hatashil. Also shaken is Lowell's student, David Ayan, who was born in the targeted village, a world away from Harvard's most exclusive final club, the Porcellian, which is courting him and Jane, the smart, risk-taking daughter of East Coast money who's sleeping with him. David Ayan struggles with his identity and Susan Lowell struggles against rumors about her relationship with Hatashil, who has been accused of ordering the village massacre. But it is Mike Teak who faces the most dangerous struggle--because when he discovers a horrific conspiracy, he immediately realizes that he has become expendable, with nowhere to run and no one to trust.

"It's clear this young writer has only begun to show where his prodigious storytelling will take us." --People

"Smart and sexy." --The Washington Post

"Tempered by some hilarious insider glimpses of Harvard life, An Expensive Education is terrific, a thriller noir that's difficult to put down or forget." --Entertainment Weekly (A-)

Review Quotes

Praise for An Expensive Education

"McDonell's third novel . . . introduces a spy who could have easily walked off the pages of le Carré's better works . . . Teak is the most attractive fictional spy in quite some time . . . one hopes this isn't [his] only appearance." --Publishers Weekly

"Part college novel and part spy thriller in the tradition of Green and le Carré, An Expensive Education encompasses global, national, and campus politics, showing the way the biggest agendas are sometimes set on the smallest stages. McDonell writes about hot topics with a cool head, and his riveting novel should fuel an emotional response from readers." --Booklist (starred review)

"McDonell's dark, relentlessly readable latest swings back and forth between Harvard and Africa, and in both cases the education is indeed expensive . . . The 20-something author keeps his smart, ambitious, self-absorbed characters at arm's-length, doling out understanding and compassion to them while withholding real affection. A novel for the head more than the heart, but so very intelligent that for a certain kind of reader it will be catnip." --Kirkus Review (starred review)

"McDonell continues his streak with a suspenseful, Graham Greene--inspired third effort . . . it's clear this young writer has only begun to show where his prodigious storytelling will take us." --People

"An Expensive Education blends a terse story of international intrigue with a biting satire of Harvard . . . Smart and sexy and could be the beginning of a franchise more lucrative than literary fiction." --Ron Charles, The Washington Post

"For decades, the intersection of the Ivy League and the CIA has made for good storytelling. But most of these are august tales of the Cold War, told from the wise, occasionally stuffy viewpoint of an old master. Now the 25-year-old McDonell--who burst onto the literary scene at 17 with his novel Twelve--has enlivened the genre with An Expensive Education . . . Tempered by some hilarious insider glimpses of Harvard life, An Expensive Education is terrific, a thriller noir that's difficult to put down or forget." --Entertainment Weekly (A-)

"At twenty-five, McDonell is delivering on his literary promise. An Expensive Education is an adult novel, albeit not too grown-up. There are nods to Graham Greene, but the book struck me as more like what an early Bret Easton Ellis novel might be like if Ellis believed in plots. . . . McDonell has mastered the mechanics of genre without losing his literary hipness." --The Oregonian

"Unerringly entertaining . . . McDonell skips from Washington to Nairobi as easily as he crosses the river between Cambridge and Boston, usually by means of short chapters and skillful cuts. . . . [His protagonist Teak] is more Holden Caulfield than James Bond: the spy in quarter-life crisis. And it's the juxtaposition of his cold-blooded training and soulful moping that gives the book its charm." --The New York Times Book Review

About the Author

Nick McDonell was born in 1984 in New York City. He is the author of two previous novels, Twelve and The Third Brother, and has reported for Harper's and Time from Sudan and Iraq.