A 2025 Edgar Award winner and Wall Street Journal, Globe, and USA Today best-selling author, Kimberly Belle resides in Atlanta, Georgia—but only fifty percent of the time. Her remaining time is spent in Amsterdam, Holland, the location of her new thriller The Ex-Pat. Amsterdam is a city Belle knows well, as upon graduation from Agnes Scott College, she packed her belongings into two suitcases and moved to Holland with her Dutch boyfriend. He became her husband. Belle’s books have sold over a million copies worldwide, but The Expat Affair is the first—she hopes not the last—to be set in her beloved city of flowers and diamonds.
Interview by Judith Erwin
Q: You moved to Amsterdam, the site of your new book, The Expat Affair, immediately after graduating from Agnes Scott College. How did that come about?
Kimberly: The boy I went with, who is still my husband, was in grad school. It was the tail end of Agnes Scott College; we met, and it was kind of a whirlwind. He said, “I have to go back and graduate.” And I said, “If I’m ever going to pick up and move to a foreign country, now would be the time before I have a real job and before I build a life with houses and all those things that can tie you down. I’m kind of free as a bird right now. So, I’ll go, and if it doesn’t work out, I’ll come back.”
Q: How long did you stay?
Kimberly: About twelve or twelve and a half years. Both kids were born there and then we moved back. My kids finished school here. My son actually went back for grad school and ended up staying. He’s in Amsterdam now and living the Dutch life. My daughter is now in New York. So, we kinda split our time between the two. We spend about fifty percent of the time there.
Q: What about Amsterdam do you love?
Kimberly: Amsterdam is a gorgeous city. It’s like walking through a postcard—flowers everywhere. Everything’s old, charming, and beautiful, and so I love that part. Other parts of Amsterdam took a little longer for me to fall in love with. The people are very friendly to strangers, but they’re not always very welcoming as friends. It takes a little longer to find your people, but now that I have, and now that I speak the language, I just love everything about it.
Q: Where did the plot for The Expat Affair come from?
Kimberly: It’s Rayna’s story that came to me first—the escaping to a foreign country you think is going to be an adventure that takes a turn you did not see coming. I knew going in I wanted the story to be about their [Rayna and Willow] relationship. Even though they each have their individual lives with things going on, I wanted it to be their moving toward each other and their lives intersecting. I don’t know if I’d call it a friendship, at least not at the beginning, but to be put in a place where they almost need each other to survive and to figure out what is going on. That was where the premise started.
Q: Was it difficult to connect all of the pieces?
Kimberly: Yes, it was. This book was more difficult than I thought it was going to be. There are a lot of pieces and a lot of stories that initially don’t seem to be connected but do connect at some point. Getting that right, the timing and the pacing, took me a couple of drafts. But Amsterdam is such a special place to me, I wanted to get it right. I wanted to make the reader want to go there and love it as much as I do.
Q: What made you choose the diamond industry? Do you have connections with that industry?
Kimberly: No, I wish. I needed a reason to set it in Amsterdam. I pitched The Paris Widow as The Amsterdam Widow, and my editor said, “Well, for your first book overseas, let’s use a city that is a little more well-known.” For this book, I wanted a solid reason to set it in Amsterdam. So, I started doing research. I came across the diamond industry. Amsterdam is known for the diamond industry in history, but it’s moved to Antwerp. Then, I came across the lab grown diamonds and thought—here’s the plot. I can build a lot of shenanigans on top of this one.
Q: Was the House of Prins based on any particular diamond house in Amsterdam?
Kimberly: There’s the House of Asscher, which is a big one in Amsterdam and is associated with the Cullinan diamond that I talk about in the book. It was pulled out of the soil in Africa and smuggled back to Europe. That’s a real thing, and it is called the Cullinan. There are a couple of diamond houses in Amsterdam still active that I looked at and did a little bit of diving into but not too much. I wanted my imagination to be able to take over.
Q: You said you were very aware of what being an expat is like. How much of Rayna or Willow did you draw from your experience?
Kimberly: A lot for both of them from myself. I moved there when I was younger than both of them. I moved there with two suitcases, knowing one person on the planet who lived there—my now husband. I remember that feeling of just being overwhelmed by the strangeness of everything around me, not knowing a soul—not understanding the language or the rules, or how things worked. You go to get on a train, and you have no idea how to buy a ticket. It’s that bad. You have to relearn everything in the way the world works. It is just so different. I really wanted to capture that part in Rayna. And then on top of that, she wakes up, and this man is dead in the shower. And Rayna is looking like the last person to have seen him alive. So, there’s the scary part with the legality—not understanding, not knowing how the legal system works. Is she a suspect? How does she get herself out of this? Who do you trust when you are thousands of miles from home?
Q: And Willow?
Kimberly: Willow has been there for five years but still can’t quite feel like it’s fully home. I remember that feeling, too. You don’t quite feel like your real self. Willow says something like, “I’m so much smarter and funnier in English.” I remember feeling that. Trying to express yourself, make friends, feel at home, and feel like it is the place you want to be. I put a lot of that into both characters—all felt very personal to me as I was writing.
Q: Was there any scene in the book that was particularly difficult to write?
Kimberly: All of them. No. I think it wasn’t really a particular scene. I think the thing that was the most difficult was just getting the pieces to fall in place. I fiddled with those a lot. I moved things around, switching some things and adding a scene here and there that wasn’t in my outline just to make everything work. That was the hardest part for me.
Q: Do you see more of your stories taking place in Amsterdam?
Kimberly: I would love that. I’m in the middle of authoring a book that’s set here in Atlanta. But I’m definitely not done writing stories set in Europe, especially Holland.
Q: Can you tell us more about the book you’re writing?
Kimberly: I have actually two books going right now. I just turned in Book 3 in the Young Rich Widows series. I don’t have a publication date for it yet. It’ll come out first on Audible. A year or so later, it’ll be out in paperback and ebook. I’m working on a book set here in Atlanta. I can’t really talk too much about it. But it’s about a couple dealing with infertility and very desperate for a baby—another thriller. So, use your imagination.
Q: Is there anything right now on your career wish list?
Kimberly: Yeah. Two, actually three things. I have two books in development for TV/movie. And I would love for one of them to actually make it all the way to the finish line. Both look very promising. Hopefully, I will be able to check that off soon. And I would love to have a book in Dutch—translated into Dutch. I’m in Germany, France, England, all sorts of Scandinavian countries, Spain, Portugal, everywhere but Holland. I’m like, come on. Seems like a home run. I can help with promo. I’m there. I can go on a book tour. Just tell me where to be and when. I’ll be there. But, so far, that hasn’t happened. I’ve hit a bunch of lists, but I’d love to find myself on the New York Times list at some point. One day one day.
Review by Judith Erwin
Kimberly Belle’s latest thriller, The Expat Affair, is a fast-paced book with numerous twists and turns. Set in Amsterdam, Holland, a place near and dear to the author’s heart, the story tracks Rayna, an American divorcee attempting to put the pieces of her life back together by starting a new life in another country. However, her first foray into a world of fun and risk ends in horror when she finds her handsome and successful one-night stand dead in the shower. In addition to the violent death, near priceless diamonds are missing. To add to her shock, she was in the apartment at the time of his death but has no recollection of any disturbance, which haunts her, particularly when being questioned by the authorities. As the presumed last person to see him alive, she is in the crosshairs of local law enforcement.
In a parallel story, another American expatriot, who married into an iconic diamond industry family, faces her own issues. While readers are likely to wonder how these two women are connected, it becomes clear and both face danger in the process.
When readers find themselves staying up late, anxiously reading to unravel the mystery, many will imagine what it would be like to be thousands of miles from home without dedicated friends or family for support and little knowledge of the language and customs. How would it be to face possible legal charges alone, or even worse to face the threat of serious harm from greedy and vicious actors?
The Expat Affair is Debeers meets Succession—a description to which the author agrees, as murder, diamonds, and family dynamics abound in the page turning novel.
