The Nature of Things

The Israeli assassin Gabriel Allon has been outed. His cover as the art restorer Mario Delvechhio has been blown. His enemies know who he is and where he is which puts him in mortal danger. Responding to the threat, the Israeli intelligence service hastily extracts Allon and his lover, who is also an Israeli agent, from Venice and brings them back to Israel where they are given new quarters and Gabriel must go to the "Office" every day to participate in an inquisition as to how the latest debacle happened. There had recently been several terrorist bombings of Israeli facilities around the world, bombings that were attributed to Palestinians, but the Israelis must figure out who is planning and executing these attacks. There is an urgency about doing this before another attack takes place. Meanwhile, Gabriel has made arrangements to bring his wife, Leah, who has been in a nursing facility in England for thirteen years since the explosion that killed their son and seriously inj...

This fourth book in the Gabriel Allon series was published in 2003 and once again we find the art restorer/Israeli agent dealing with surviving Holocaust victims and war criminals nearly sixty years after the end of the war. The clock is running out on these people and with it the possibility of bringing any sort of justice to either the victims or their tormentors. This entry finds Allon still working on restoring a painting at a church in Venice. While he works there, a bomb explodes in Vienna at the Wartime Claims and Inquiries Office. The head of the office, Eli Lavon, is also a sometime Israeli agent and a friend of Allon. He is seriously injured in the blast and the two women who worked with him are killed. Ari Shamron, Allon's former boss at the Israeli intelligence agency, arranges for him to go to Vienna to investigate. There he meets an elderly Holocaust survivor who insists that a prominent local businessman named Ludwig Vogel is actually a notorious Nazi war criminal na...

Art restorer Mario Delvecchio, aka Israeli agent/assassin Gabriel Allon, is engaged in the meticulous and tedious task of restoring a Benini altarpiece in a church in Venice when his friend and fellow Israeli agent Benjamin Stern is murdered in Munich. Benjamin was a history professor there who had been in the process of writing a book. The subject of the book had been kept secret by him, but all of his notes and the draft of the book were stolen from his apartment by his killer; thus, it seems likely that the book was the motive for his murder. Soon, Gabriel/Mario is contacted by his Israeli handler, Ari Shamron, and is sent on a mission to Munich to find out what happened to Benjamin and who killed him. His investigation leads him to London, to an investigative reporter there who was apparently collaborating with Benjamin on the book. Shortly after Gabriel meets with him, the reporter, too, is murdered. Obviously, the subject of the book must have been explosive. Following the clues ...

Summer seems the perfect time for reading mysteries and thrillers. As the summer doldrums set in - as they definitely have in my neck of the woods - we need something to stir the blood a bit and make the heart race. Thriller/mysteries seem just the ticket for that. With that thought in mind, I turned to the second book in Daniel Silva's Gabriel Allon series. I had read the first book in that series,  The Kill Artist ,  last summer, just over a year ago. I was impressed enough to put the series on my reading list and so here I sit, The English Assassin in hand. Gabriel Allon, for those who may be unaware, is an Israeli art restorer who lives in Cornwall, England. Restoring art is his day job but he also has a second and secret life as an agent of the Israeli government. As such, he is, from time to time, called into service on special assignments. His secret life has cost him much. Most notably, it cost him the life of his baby son whose body was blown to bits by a car bomb se...

The Kill Artist by Daniel Silva My rating: 3 of 5 stars One of my blogger-buddies, Carmen , is a big fan of this series and my husband has recommended it to me on various occasions over the years, so I finally decided to pick it up and see what all the shouting was about. After all, the series has been very popular since this first book was published in 2001. There are many who love it, so it must have some interesting qualities to recommend it. Of course, the only way to read a series, in my opinion, is to start at the beginning, so here I sit with the first of the Gabriel Allon spy thrillers, The Kill Artist, in hand, and, overall, I did find it to be an interesting read. For those unfamiliar with the books, Daniel Silva's creation, Gabriel Allon, is a former agent with the Israeli Mossad. He left the spy service some years before this first book and settled down to become an art restorer. He was very successful at this profession and has become one of the most acclaimed restor...