How Kimberly Belle Turned Expat Life into a Thriller (plus a Giveaway and ThrillerFest Meet Up!)

with Danielle Girard

and

Jun 19, 2025

Kimberly Belle is the Edgar Award winning, USA Today & internationally bestselling author with over one million copies sold worldwide. Her titles include The Paris Widow, The Marriage Lie, a Goodreads Choice Awards semifinalist for Best Mystery & Thriller, and the co-authored #1 Audible Original, Young Rich Widows series. Kimberly’s novels have been optioned for film and television and selected by LibraryReads and Amazon & Apple Books Editors as Best Books of the Month, and the International Thriller Writers as nominee for best book of the year. She divides her time between Atlanta and Amsterdam.

The Expat Affair is out now!

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First off, brava! I loved The Expat Affair and in some ways, the story felt like a natural progression from The Paris Widow, your stories growing ever closer to your own experience of living as an American in Europe. (Minus the murders, thank goodness.)

Have you had other ideas for setting a novel in your second home of Amsterdam or was this the first one and what was it like to write about your second home?

Girl. When I say I’ve been pitching a novel set in Amsterdam for a while now, I’m talking at least for the past five or six books. What can I say? I’m a persistent gal. But writing about my second home was actually a lot harder than I expected. I knew the basics, of course: the lay of the land, the customs and the language. But I also wanted to do the city justice. That meant showing off its charm and beauty (hello, canals and cobblestoned streets!) while also being honest about its flaws. It’s a love letter, yes, but a realistic one.

What inspired you to set the book in Amsterdam's diamond industry? How did you research that fascinating but secretive world?

While researching possible premises, I came across an article about how lab-grown diamonds are disrupting the industry in a big, permanent way—and when there’s that much money involved, there’s plenty of room for shenanigans. Amsterdam was once the diamond capital of the world, so it seemed like the perfect setting. I used the handful of world-renowned diamond houses still based there as a jumping-off point, then let my imagination do the rest.

Rayna finds herself in every expat's nightmare scenario—waking up next to a dead body in a foreign country. How did you approach writing the terror and disorientation of being so far from home?

I lived it—minus the murder, of course. I moved to Amsterdam in my twenties and experienced everything Rayna does: the confusion, the disorientation, the way even simple daily tasks suddenly feel impossible. That feeling of being completely alone in a city of millions, with no one to call if something goes wrong…it’s deeply unsettling. And the perfect starting point for a thriller.

Rayna and Willow, the two women central to the story, are initially on opposite sides but get pulled into the same dangerous situation. Did you plan their alliance or did that happen as you were writing? (This nods to the plotter vs pantser question if you’d like to address that).

I map out the entire book scene by scene before I write a single word. So yes, I always knew Rayna and Willow’s paths would collide and that their uneasy alliance would become the heart of the story. That said, a few moments surprised me as I wrote, especially around the ways their dynamic evolved. I knew what would happen between them, but the how—the emotion, the tension, the reluctant, begrudging trust—ended up being much more layered than I first imagined. That’s the magic that happens even when you know the plot. As I write, the characters take on lives of their own.

Trust seems to be a central theme, especially with the tagline "who can you trust in a city thousands of miles from home?" How does being an outsider in a foreign culture amplify the paranoia and uncertainty the characters face?

When you're in a foreign country, the usual rules don’t always apply. You don’t know who to turn to, what the social cues mean, or even if the police will be on your side. Things like language barriers, unfamiliar laws, and cultural differences chip away at your sense of control. For Rayna and Willow, that outsider status makes every interaction feel charged. The stakes are higher when the question of who to trust could be life-threatening. Not so fun for Rayna and Willow, but for the reader, it’s exactly the kind of twisty tension that makes a thriller hard to put down.

Without spoilers, can you tell us about the challenges of plotting a thriller where diamonds, murder, and international intrigue intersect? How did you keep all those moving pieces organized and did the story change in any unexpected ways as you wrote it?

I know some writers can juggle multiple threads without an outline, but I am not one of them. I need a detailed roadmap to keep everything straight, but even with a solid plan, stories always evolve in ways I don’t expect. Some characters demand more page time, others reveal motivations I don’t see coming. That’s always the balance for me, staying true to the structure while letting the story breathe and surprise me along the way.

We’re all about the thrills here at Thriller Thursday. What has thrilled you lately?

Winning the Edgar, hands down. To take home that statue was beyond anything I imagined. Writing is such a solitary pursuit, but nights like that remind me what a privilege it is to be part of this community. And the best part? Getting to fangirl in real life over some of my absolute literary heroes.

What are you currently reading?

At the top of my TBR currently are a couple of Killer Author Club reads--Clémence Michallon’s Our Last Resort and Peter Swanson’s Kill Your Darlings are next up in my stack, along with an early peek at Robyn Harding’s upcoming Strangers in the Villa. It’s one of the best perks of this job—piles and piles of books.

Question for our readers. Answer in the comments for a chance to WIN a signed copy of The Expat Affair!

If you woke up in a foreign city next to a dead body à la The Expat Affair, what’s the first thing you’d do?

THIS WEEKEND at ThrillerFest…

Join us for a Thriller Thursday Meet & Greet—with prizes—and come listen to us on ThrillerFest panels throughout the weekend!

Thriller Thursday Meet & Greet

Join the Thriller Thursday crew this Saturday morning at the Hilton Lobby Bar! Come say hello, grab some free bookmarks and swag, and get your Thriller Thursday Bingo card signed for a chance to win signed books!

📅 When: Saturday at 11 a.m.
📍 Where: Hilton Lobby Bar