Chagos Archipelago: A Novel

by Tom Lutz

A Spanish woman trying to retire as an assassin, a French Foreign Legion deserter from Madagascar, a mysterious (perhaps CIA) woman from America, a billionaire military contractor, and a man wandering the seas alone on a sailing ship bump into each other in the Indian Ocean, and not all of them survive.

Mónica has had enough of her life as contract killer when she meets lonely wanderer Frank Baltimore in a stupidly expensive resort in Madagascar. A few hundred miles away, Alain has had more than enough of his solitary post on a tiny island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and so when the mysterious Skye offers him a job, he says yes—he doesn’t know if she is CIA, Wagner, Darkwater, or a gangster, but he wants in. She takes him to Diego Garcia, the top-secret US military base in the middle of the Indian Ocean, for training. Things turn ugly and deadly when a man from Frank’s past turns up trying to break into the lucrative, secretive, already crowded world of paramilitary contractors. He, Monica, Alain, and Skye end up on his bad side and turn to each other for help.

296 pages, Paperback

Published October 14, 2025

About the author

I have just published the third volume of my travel writing, THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS ()October 2021). A volume of photographic portraits of people I've met on the road is coming out in February 2022, PORTRAITS: MOMENTS OF INTIMACY ON THE ROAD.

A book of philosophical and literary critical reflections, AIMLESSNESS, was published in January 2021 by Columbia University Press.

My first novel, BORN SLIPPY: A NOVEL was published in January, 2020 (Repeater/PRH).

I've just sent a sequel, STILL SLIPPY, to my agent.

I am the author of two earlier books of travel narrative — And The Monkey Learned Nothing and Drinking Mare’s Milk on the Roof of the World — the cultural histories Doing Nothing and Crying; literary histories Cosmopolitan Vistas and American Nervousness, 1903; pieces for New York Times, LA Times, ZYZZYVA, Exquisite Corpse, New Republic, Salon, Black Clock, Iowa Review, and other places.

I’m a Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the UC Riverside, the founding editor in chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books, founder of The LARB Radio Hour, The LARB Quarterly Journal, The LARB/USC Publishing Workshop, and LARB Books. I am a part-time musician, an amateur photographer, and a full-time dilettante. I live in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Weese]

Good read

[Courtney Pityer · Rating 5 out of 5]

thI won this in a giveaway but it just wasn't for me.

[Ryan Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good spy thriller that feels more like a character study. I thought the characters had gravity. The ending was a bit clunky but overall good pacing and good use of multiple character perspectives.

[Alicia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chagos Archipelago by Tom Lutz is a spy thriller told through four morally grey perspectives: Frank, a man of uncertain fortune; Skye, an American ethnographer with suspect motives; Monica, a contract killer; and Alain, a local soldier enlists in the French Foreign Legion enlistment as a personal atonement for cheating on his wife.

Lutz (founder of the Los Angeles Review of Books) makes the forbidden Chagos Islands’ real history of displacement (1967–1973) come alive through story, not lecture. Characters inspired by real people (Alain is heavily based on Lutz’s Mauritian driver) feel vividly human. My favourite detail from our interview: his paramilitary knowledge came mostly from Netflix.

Some threads stay unresolved (like the Monica/Frank romance), but this suits Lutz’s vision of one evolving fictional world. Plot-driven yet contemplative, Chagos Archipelago is perfect for fans of thoughtful spy thrillers.

Read my full review, exclusive interview insights with author Tom Lutz, and more bookish notes at: https://readswithalicia.substack.com/