TITLE: The Kill Artist (Gabriel Allon #1)
AUTHOR: Daniel Silva
GENRE: Fiction/Thriller/Action & Adventure
PUBLISHED: April 6, 2004
RATING: ★★★★☆
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iTunes
MOBILISM LINK: Gabriel Allon Series
Review: Former Israeli intelligence operative Gabriel Allon is drawn back into the game to take on a cunning terrorist on one last killing spree, a Palestinian zealot who played a dark part in Gabriel's past. And what begins as a manhunt turns into a globe-spanning duel fueled by both political intrigue and deep personal passions...
Spy thrillers? What do we know about them? They operate under secret clandestine situations answering to no one but a female handler at the CIA. THAT is how most spy thrillers seem to be written. The Kill Artist is SO much different and SO much better.
A respected art restorer is in the midst of restoring a cathedral in Venice when a bomb rips apart the car his wife and child were riding in. Makes sense for the whole story to be about a vendetta hunting down the culprit from then on but flash forward a few years when the Israeli secret service known as Mossad is in disarray following the execution style assassination of a high ranking minister in Paris and no one seems to know who was responsible. Ari Shamron, the brought out of retirement chain smoking security minister has an idea but he needs an old friend and colleague to help him. Filling this book with the countries of Western Europe (Switzerland, Spain, France, Italy) this book feels in a good way like a travel brochure before settling in London, Canada, and then New York.
Gabriel Allon, retired agent for Mossad has resigned himself to the peaceful life of restoring priceless works of art. He is a properly tortured soul. Written with a human sense of reality I liked Allon, he felt real, felt like a proper spy and not some super spy who just keeps going after getting punched by a henchman and makes it seem like it was a little slap in the face. He wants revenge but he doesn't seek it out at every corner. Only when he gets some persuading from Ari Shamron about the attack on the minister that an old adversary might have been responsible does he take up the task to help.
All along it's a proper game of cat and mouse, not some heavy handed toward the villain till the very end when the hero catches him in a lax state of mind. They (Mossad) have an inkling of what might be going on in the mind of Tariq, the mastermind behind the assassination in Paris but only till the end does it become apparent and its a proper build up, a pièce de résistance so to speak and you just groan and agonize that it didn't seem possible at first but there is SO much involved, so much detail to take in.
Silva has written a proper spy novel because it isn't about an American for once. Why don't people write about Israeli spies? Probably because they fear the political outcry that the author only wanted to write it in a supportive position of Israel but I didn't get that feeling at all. I felt it was written as entertainment. I didn't feel like it was heavy handed in the favor of Israel at all even if the main character is an Israeli. It fictionalized some of the factual struggles with trying to obtain peace between Israel and Palestine in a sort of current but alternate reality in a "what could have happened if?" way. That is why I kept reading till the end. There are a lot of well written characters. Even the secondary and minor characters feel like they belong. It's an appreciative work of skill. A "gripping page turner of suspense" as it goes. Trust me there are a lot of excellent twist and turns in this novel.