Quick Book Reviews Blog

Daniel Silva has introduced us seventeen books ago to Gabriel Allon, legendary spy (now chief of Israeli Intelligence) and art restorer on the sly. His adventures have taken him around the entire world as he stopped one terrorist threat after another, and in his latest outing titled "House of Spies" , he sets on the trail of a very dangerous man who left London's West End in ruins more or less. In order to get to him, Allon makes an uneasy alliance with an enormously wealthy drug dealer who conducts business with the wanted man.

It would seem that the world never ceases to find occupations with which to prevent master spies (and as it happens, art restorers) from resting on idyllic vacations, or at least, such is the case with Gabriel Allon in Daniel Silva's The Rembrandt Affair . Once again we followed the (at this point) legendary Mossad  agent as he is taken on a trek across the world in search for the perpetrators of a heinous and rather mysterious crime in Glastonbury: the murder of an art restorer and the theft of Rembrandt painting.

In The Heist by Daniel Silva we are once again treated to the exciting adventures of Gabriel Allon, super Israeli spy and, somewhat incomprehensibly, an art restorer (I guess everyone needs a hobby). As it happens, Allon's talents in the world of art serve him time and time again, stumbling into one case after the next, with each one seeming to be made specifically for his skills.

In the last few years Daniel Silva has made a name for himself as the author of various exciting thrillers and mystery novels, many of them revolving around a recurring protagonist, Gabriel Allon, master Israeli intelligence officer and art restorer extraordinaire. After finishing a case where his ridiculously-useless (for intelligence work of course) talent turned out to actually have a purpose, Gabriel Allon finds himself entangled in a whole different kind of web in The English Girl .

In The Fallen Angel , Gabriel Allon is an Israeli Intelligence officer who isn't happy with a life full of danger, death and explosions, and so after nearly losing his life in his last operation he decided to defect and seek refuge with the Vatican. Surprisingly, Gabriel is also a capable art restorer (a mandatory skill for Israeli Intelligence officers) and thus decides to spend his time at the Vatican by restoring one of Caravaggio’s masterpieces.