The English Assassin, by Daniel Silva

Another strong, dark story from one of the new masters of spy thriller writing, Daniel Silva! This book too features an ensemble of very fascinating characters. The English Assassin, by Daniel Silva In The English Assassin we meet, once again, Israeli assassin and art restorer Gabriel Allon. His prime opponent is an extremely wealthy Swiss banker who controls the Swiss secret police as well as a major portion of the Swiss banking system, a dark figure that lurks in the background and exerts his power in the shadows. However, there is also the Mafia and a well trained, superbly skilled assassin known as the Englishman.

The English Assassin is one of the most complex thrillers by Daniel Silva so far. The plot starts with Gabriel being sent to Zurich under a

pseudonym to restore a Raphael belonging to a prominent Swiss banker and art collector, Augustus Rolfe, but upon arriving he finds Rolfe lying in a pool of blood.

Allon locates and meets Rolfe's daughter, Anna, who is a world-class violinist attempting to rebuild her career after an accident that nearly destroyed one of her hands. Temperamental and mistrustful, she nevertheless believes Gabriel's story, and reveals that Rolfe owned a secret collection of priceless French Impressionist paintings, apparently stolen by his murderers.

Rapidly Gabriel Allon’s investigation uncovers a large story involving large-scale theft of art by the Nazi’s during World War II, and of bonds between Nazi Germany and Switzerland that resulted in much of the stolen art ending up in Switzerland. At the same time, the threatening figure of the English assassin is also drawn into the vortex of the past when he stalks his assigned targets, Anna Rolfe and Gabriel Allon. Everywhere he goes, he leaves death in his wake. Just as Allon is tormented by what he feels compelled to do for his country and his personal losses, so is the Englishman ravaged by his soul.

Like Daniel Silva’s other books, especially The Kill Artist, The English Assassin balances very fascinating, well drawn characters, lots of historical detail, and international intrigue in a thought out blend. An exciting read!

More reviews of books by Daniel Silva: Daniel Silva page 1, Daniel Silva page 3!
Links to Daniel Silva's books at: Amazon US, amazon UK, Bokkilden.no, Haugen bok

The Kill Artist, by Daniel Silva

The Kill Artist is, chronologically speaking, the first book in Daniel Silva’s series about Gabriel Allon. Allon is an art restorer, whose skill is great demand. He is more or less able to pick and choose his projects. However, he is more than that - he is The Kill Artist, by Daniel Silva also a former member of the Mossad hit squad that killed Black September members in revenge for their attacks on Israelis in Germany.

Now he has retired from Mossad. But he is drawn out of retirement by Ari Shamron, the crafty Israeli spymaster, who is wants Allon to embark on a deadly mission - to kill Tariq, a Palestinian agent, before he can carry out his plan to assassinate an old comrade-in-arms, the treacherous peacemaker Yasir Arafat. As Tariq is the likely murderer of Gabriel Allon’s son, he accepts the mission.

In The Kill Artist, Shamron teams Allon up with with Jacqueline Delacroix, a French supermodel/Israeli secret agent whose grandparents died in the Holocaust. Gabriel sets up in London to monitor Yusef, Tariq's fellow terrorist and confidant. Jacqueline is assigned to seduce him in hopes of intercepting Tariq, who is devising a plan to stop the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

Daniel Silva is a master of the espionage thriller. His books always move along at a fast pace, and The Kill Artist is no exception. Whereas John Le Carre tends to let his spies play a gentleman's game, Silva's spies are not gentlemen, and the game no gentlemen's game. Daniel Silva describes hard, boring and dirty intelligence work by one of the hardest and dirtiest intelligence services on the planet. Gabriel's Mossad plays entirely unfairly, as it must, as it does in real life. Mossad and Shamron even allows a beautiful model to prostitute herself for the cause. The realism, along with the characters of course, is what I especially love in Daniel Silva’s books, and in The Kill Artist this realism is very present.

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A Death in Vienna, by Daniel Silva

A Death in Vienna deals with issues surrounding the Holocaust. A Death in Vienna, by Daniel Silva The death camps of the Reich provide the underpinnings of this intense and fast-paced novel in which the author draws attention to the collusion of governments and institutions in protecting Nazi war criminals into the present day. This is the fourth book in the highly acclaimed series about the art restorer and Israeli spy Gabriel Allon.

The starting point in A Death in Vienna is the bombing of the "Wartime Claims and Inquires" offices in Vienna. This is where Gabriel Allon's friend, Eli Lavon, works. Lavon is seriously injured in the blast, and Allon is sent to find the perpetrators of this crime. The Austrian government declares the bombing to be the work of an Islamist terrorist group. However, Mossad and Allon do not buy this explanation. Allon believes it may instead have been engineered by Nazi criminals hoping to prevent Lavon from discovering their whereabouts.

The action in A Death in Vienna takes Allon from Vienna to Israel, Italy, Argentina, the US, and back to Vienna. He gradually realizes that there are complex political, financial, and national security issues that affect a number of countries, and that the story he unfolds has its beginnings back in World War II. Erich Radek, a former Nazi with links to Auschwitz and Treblinka, who is still alive and active in Vienna, plays a prominent part in this, as does Konrad Becker, a Zurich banker who has a client with over two billion dollars in assets. Also involved, it seems, is the Vatican and the American CIA who together protected selected war criminals after the war.

The case becomes personal when Allon, who reads his mother's account of her time in the camps "I will not tell all the things I saw. I cannot. I owe this much to the dead", discovers that not only was Radek a sadistic monster, his mother was very nearly murdered by him.

The story told by Silva in this book is a chilling tale indeed. A Death in Vienna is, like all of Daniel Silva’s books, fast-paced, compelling, and filled with intriguing twists and turns. It is well-researched and thought-provoking. Also, of course, it is exciting and entertaining. It is also, however, a serious book telling a serious story - there are important lessons still to be learned and vital history still to be remembered in A Death in Vienna.


The Confessor, by Daniel Silva

Again, Daniel Silva brings back his enigmatic hero, Gabriel Allon, a The Confessor, by Daniel Silvabrilliant Israeli art restorer and a complex, melancholy man: This time to investigate the mysterious murder of a dear friend, a Jewish history professor in Germany. The murdered man is Allon's boyhood friend Benjamin Stern. He was murdered in his Munich apartment while writing a book on Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church's involvement in the Holocaust.

Ari Shamron, Gabriel's old mentor, former head of Israeli intelligence, and the father of Ben Stern, finds Allon in Venice, restoring a Bellini altarpiece. He is able, as usual, to persuade Allon to investigate the murder. As a reviewer of this book, Tim Smith as the amazon.com website, pointed out, The Confessor “is actually speculative historical fiction about the role of the Catholic Church during WW II. Since the Vatican has chosen not to open the Secret Archives, the public (and gifted authors) can only speculate about the role of the Catholic Church and particularly Pope Pius XII as Hitler was devastating Europe and carrying out his Final Solution.”

And this is exactly what Daniel Silva does in The Confessor. And as usual he does a great job. While Allon has problems getting anywhere with his investigation in Munich, he discovers clues to the secrets of his friend's manuscript. These point to material from top secret Vatican archives that proves Pope Pius XII, and the Church, were directly involved with the Nazis in the implementation of the Holocaust. It also points to a secret Vatican society, the Crux Vera.

Gradually the discoveries involve Gabriel Allon in a deadly conflict with a gunman known as "the Leopard" – an assassin - working for Crux Vera as well as the forces of the Italian secret police. At stake is both the truth about the Church’s involvement, the future of the Church, and the life of the Pope. It becomes a race against time, and with the odds seemingly stacked against Gabriel Allon.

Yet again Daniel Silva has managed to create an exciting, intelligent thriller. However, while the somewhat provocative historical “revelations” keep readers enthralled, the plot in The Confessor in my view sticks a little too close to Silva's formula. It is a book well worth reading, but still not among Daniel Silva’s best, in my opinion.

Links to Daniel Silva's books at: Amazon US, amazon UK, Bokkilden.no, Haugen bok


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