The English Spy

February 1, 2015
Art restorer, assassin, and spy, Gabriel Allon is back for your entertainment. No plot details yet, but expect lots of readers for this latest in a string of "New York Times" best sellers from Silva, whose sales have been bounding. There's a 500,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2015

Art restorer, assassin, and spy, Gabriel Allon is back for your entertainment. No plot details yet, but expect lots of readers for this latest in a string of New York Times best sellers from Silva, whose sales have been bounding. There's a 500,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2015
Gabriel Allon may be a talented, world-renowned restorer of classic paintings, but he's willing to kneecap a Russian spy if necessary. In Silva's (The Heist, 2014, etc.) latest, Allon, bravura field agent for "the Office," Israel's secret spy organization, isn't worried about art supplies. He's after Eamon Quinn, a mercenary who was once the Real IRA's top bomb-maker, who's just killed the widely beloved ex-wife of the future king of England, an "immensely shy and beautiful middle-class girl" who turned out to be "wholly unsuited for life in the royal fishbowl." It turns out the princess was collateral damage, her assassination engineered to lure Allon and Christopher Keller, British SAS veteran-turned-professional assassin, into pursuit. The Russian spy agency has hired Quinn to kill Allon as payback for destroying its plot to blackmail Britain's prime minister into granting North Sea oil rights. Quinn gets a bonus: Keller, his blood-enemy from the days of the Troubles. With Vienna's, London's, and Belfast's mean streets providing atmosphere, Silva deftly weaves together narrative threads and seamlessly drops in back story without boring longtime fans. Allon's always an empathetic protagonist; now Keller's character gets depth and nuance. Allon and Keller, ego and id laser-focused on Quinn, are lured into a London bombing and then a gunfight raid at a Real IRA safe house deep in Bandit Country. The realistic and relentless action is framed by bureaucratic back-stabbing and blame-shifting as MI6's Graham Seymour and MI5's Amanda Wallace are left to explain more than one double, or triple, agent dead or disappeared. This page-turner deepens Allon's legend and illuminates more of his shadowy world, all while cementing Silva's place among the top tier of spy thriller writers.

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July 1, 2015
Silva's series hero, Gabriel Allon, works in the best (if somewhat preposterous) tradition of the gentleman spy who coolly juggles avocations and assassinations. Allon is an art restorer par excellence and a master spy who works for Israel's secret intelligence service. This time out, the art restoration (which generally is the most fascinating and original part of Silva's novels) is glossed over in favor of the search for the killer of a British royal. No sooner have Gabriel and his wife, Chiara (pregnant with twins), discovered a long-lost Caravaggio in sore need of repair, but he's called away to try to determine who masterminded the murder of the former wife of the future king of England aboard her pleasure yacht in the Caribbean. The victim is obviously derived from Princess Diana, but the way that Silva shows us the steps involved in the princess' assassination is truly thrilling. Unfortunately, this bit comes early and is the most gasp-inducing part of the book. Despite this drawback, Silva delivers another involving spy novel as cat-and-mouse game.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)