Gabriel Allon, our favorite art restorer and Israeli Mossad assassin is back, and he is about to become the father of twins and replace a former associate as the head of Israel intelligence. The plot, as usual, is so implausible as to require a total suspension of belief, but the plot lines are so complex, the characters so colorful, and the payback to the bad guys so creative that one can almost ignore the fact that the author’s rage at Middle Eastern bad guys totally overshadows his writing effort …. Almost, but not quite, I’m afraid.
It appears that someone tortured and killed a prominent art thief, and when Allon’s good friend Isherwood is cast as a possible suspect after having discovered the corpse, Allon is blackmailed into taking over the investigation into the murder in order to save his friend from jail. The blackmailer is Carabinieri General Cesare Ferrari, who is obsessed with a stolen Caravaggio that the murdered man was fencing and which has once again slipped through Ferrari’s fingers.
Allon, with his usual team of Mossad specialists, soon discovers that the murdered man was fencing stolen masterpieces for the dastardly Syrian government, which was supposedly looting its people with impunity and hiding the loot in stolen paintings. Along the way, we get treated to horrifying stories about all the nasty things the Syrian government has done to its citizens – just in case we haven’t yet figured out that the bad guys are indeed the Syrian government. Get it!?
Allon is cool, smart, sophisticated, and deadly and is obviously going to be a fantastic head of Israeli intelligence despite his evident reluctance to step out of the field and be office-bound for the rest of his life. His conflict with the current holder of that office, and more importantly, with his enraged and lethal wife, is an interesting aside but quickly resolved and set aside. We get to re-visit Keller of the Corsican mob who has figured in a number of Silva’s works on Allon, and who is proving as fascinating as an Allon ally as he is terrifying as a global killer. A little mysticism gets thrown into the mix through the old Corsican soothsayer we have met before and will undoubtedly meet again.
Silva writes fairly well and his novels are generally of the edge-of-your-seat variety. My favorite parts are his expert detailing of art restoration techniques; my least favorite is his too predictable bashing of Arab bad guys at every turn. For once, I’d like to see him target some of the the rogues and fanatics on the Israeli side. No one could accuse Silva of anti-semitism, and perhaps we’d get a more balanced read of that part of the world.
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