1276. Moscow Rules (Daniel Silva)

Synopsis:

Now the death of a journalist leads Allon to Russia, where he finds that, in terms of spycraft, even he has something to learn. He's playing by Moscow rules now.

This is not the grim, gray Moscow of Soviet times but a new Moscow, awash in oil wealth and choked with bulletproof Bentleys. A Moscow where power resides once more behind the walls of the Kremlin and where critics of the ruling class are ruthlessly silenced. A Moscow where a new generation of Stalinists is plotting to reclaim an empire lost and to challenge the global dominance of its old enemy, the United States.

One such man is Ivan Kharkov, a former KGB colonel who built a global investment empire on the rubble of the Soviet Union. Hidden within that empire, however, is a more lucrative and deadly business: Kharkov is an arms dealer - and he is about to deliver Russia's most sophisticated weapons to al- Qaeda. Unless Allon can learn the time and place of the delivery, the world will see the deadliest terror attacks since 9/11 - and the clock is ticking fast.

My rating: 4 stars

1189. The Defector (Daniel Silva)

Synopsis:
Six months after the blood-soaked conclusion of Moscow Rules, Allon is in Umbria, trying to resume his honeymoon with his new wife, Chiara, when a colleague pays him a shocking visit. The man who saved Allon's life in Moscow and was then resettled in England has vanished without a trace. British intelligence is sure he was a double agent all along, and they blame Allon for planting him. To discover the truth and clear his name, Allon must go immediately to London - a decision that will prove to be the most fateful of his career.

In the British capital, he finds himself once more on the front lines of the secret war between East and West, where Russian spies and dissidents engage in the old game of cat and mouse. There, Allon uncovers a much greater conspiracy, a plot by an old enemy to resurrect a network of death, to bring the world to the precipice of a new confrontation, and in order to stop it, he must risk everything: his ties to an organization he has served since his youth, his new marriage . . . even his life.

My rating: 3 stars

My review: The character of Gabriel Allon is getting tiresome -- the brooding assassin thing is played out. Silva should start a new series starting Mikhail (but not with his annoying girlfriend Sarah).

743. The Secret Servant (Daniel Silva)

Synopsis from Amazon UK:
A leading terrorism analyst is found brutally murdered in Amsterdam. The Dutch police believe it is the work of a deranged extremist -- but others know better. Gabriel Allon -- art-restorer, spy, assassin -- is called in to make discreet inquiries. It would seem that the dead man was close to uncovering the plans of a major terrorist operation -- a new threat which no-one could have predicted. The trail leads to London, when a young woman vanishes .... She is the daughter of the American Ambassador -- and goddaughter of the President of the United States -- and the kidnappers' demands are at once horrifically clear and clearly impossible to meet. The President turns to Allon, a man whose abilities he has depended on before ... Allon soon finds himself in a desperate search for the missing woman, and those responsible -- but the truth, when he finds it, is not what he expects. In fact, it is one that will shake him, and many others, to the core.

My rating: 3 stars

My review: Not as good as the previous Gabriel Allon books in plot and writing, which, sad to say, is better than a good number of books currently being published. The main sticking point for me is when the characters lecture each other on foreign policy -- shouldn't they know this already? I do not like the practice some writers have of explaining policy issues to their readers; the characters inevitably end up sounding like some blowhard pundit on a cable news show, oversimplifying the issues while maintaining an unrealistic political stance. In his previous books, Silva has refrained from this practice but, in The Secret Servant, there's continual talk and explanation of the "puppet" regimes in the Middle East (such as in Egypt) and it becomes tiresome. I recommend skipping through these parts if you want to enjoy the book.

464. The English Assassin (Daniel Silva)

Zurich

Synopsis from Amazon:
The English Assassin brings back Gabriel Allon, the appealingly melancholy art restorer with a double life as an Israeli secret agent, first introduced in 2000's The Kill Artist. Gabriel is sent to Zurich under a pseudonym to restore a Raphael belonging to a prominent Swiss banker and art collector, Augustus Rolfe, but upon arriving he finds Rolfe lying in a pool of blood. When Gabriel tries to leave Zurich, the Swiss police capture him immediately -- and moreover, they know his real identity. He's released through some diplomatic string-pulling, but he soon discovers that Rolfe had requested a meeting with Israeli intelligence, for reasons unknown, just before his death. Rolfe's daughter, Anna, is a world-class violinist attempting to rebuild her career after an accident that nearly destroyed one of her hands. But her physical scars are nothing compared to those on her psyche, left by her mother's suicide when Anna was a teenager. Temperamental and mistrustful, she nevertheless believes Gabriel's story, and reveals that Rolfe owned a secret collection of priceless French Impressionist paintings, apparently stolen by his murderers. As Gabriel begins to put together the pieces of the puzzle, he faces two adversaries: a powerful group of men who would do anything to bury the past forever, and a hired killer who's planning a spectacular murder.

My rating: 4 stars

448. Confessor (Daniel Silva)

The Sistine Chapel

Synopsis from Amazon Canada:
"If you think Italians have a long memory, you should spend some time in the Middle East. We're the ones who invented the vendetta, not the Sicilians." So maintains Gabriel Allon, art restorer and Mossad hit man, star of Silva's second thriller series (The Mark of the Assassin, etc.). Gabriel is once again reluctantly dragged from his day job (he's working on a Bellini in Venice) by Israeli spymaster Ari Shamron, who heads a team of sleeper Mossad agents scattered all over the world. This time, it's a revenge mission: one of Shamron's agents (an academic working on an expos‚ about the Vatican's collaboration with the Nazis) has been assassinated. The gunman was working for a secret Vatican society known as Crux Vera. Composed of Roman Curia members and shady rich thugs, this shadow group intends to kill the latest pope to keep him from exposing the Vatican's secret archives. In order to find the gunman (known as "the Leopard," a reclusive European of independent means who hires out his deadly skills to the highest bidder), Gabriel must take up his slain colleague's research, something the Italian and German governments assuredly do not want him to do. Gabriel is hounded all across Europe as he tries to find out the truth about the Nazi collaborators, save the pope and get the Leopard.

My rating: 4 stars

428. A Death in Vienna (Daniel Silva)

Synopsis from Amazon UK:
Art restorer and spy Gabriel Allon is sent to Vienna to discover the truth behind a bombing which killed an old friend -- a Nazi hunter. While there he encounters something that turns his whole life upside down. Each fact he uncovers only leads to more questions until finally a picture emerges which is more terrible than he could have ever imagined -- a portrait of evil stretching across 60 years and thousands of lives into his own personal nightmares.

My rating: 4 stars

414. Prince of Fire (Daniel Silva)

Synopsis from Amazon Canada:
Silva's latest novel to feature art restorer/Israeli agent Gabriel Allon (after 2004's A Death in Vienna) is a passionate, intelligently crafted entry that cements the series' place among today's top spy fiction. The structure is classic -- the semireluctant spy, Gabriel, is pulled from his cover to hunt down terrorists who have committed a horrific crime, in this case the bombing of the Israeli embassy in Rome. The mastermind behind the bombing is French archeologist Paul Martineau, aka "Khaled, son of Sabri, grandson of Sheikh Asad. Khaled, avenger of past wrongs, sword of Palestine." Orphaned as a child after his father is killed by the Israelis, Khaled is also the adopted son of Yasir Arafat, who has now activated Khaled to wreak vengeance on his mortal enemies. Gabriel assembles a team of crack young agents and sets out to find when and where Khaled will strike next. The determined team tracks down the terrorist, but when Gabriel goes in for the kill the plot takes a stunning twist; the lives of all, plus hundreds of innocent bystanders, are threatened. Gabriel is a complex character with a rich past. His wife, Leah, is confined to a psychiatric hospital in London, mentally damaged and physically disfigured from the bombing that killed their son. He lives with the beautiful Chiara, whom he can't marry out of loyalty to Leah, even though she seems to barely know him. Silva hints at further entries in the series in which Gabriel must step up and assume new duties: "Gabriel, you are the mightiest," his former mentor tells the agent. "You're the one who defends Israel against its accusers. You're the angel of judgment -- the Prince of Fire."

My rating: 4 stars

324. The Kill Artist (Daniel Silva)

Synopsis from Amazon:
Gabriel Allon is an art restorer who's persuaded out of retirement by Ari Shamron, the crafty Israeli spymaster bent on a deadly mission: killing a Palestinian agent named Tariq before he can carry out his plan to assassinate an old comrade-in-arms, the treacherous peacemaker Yasir Arafat. Tariq's role in the murder of Gabriel's wife and son draws both Gabriel and Sarah Halevy, the beautiful French model whose affair with Gabriel led to the assassination of his family. Still in love with Gabriel, Sarah allows herself to be set up with a cover and infiltrated into Tariq's inner circle. But before Gabriel can rescue her and fulfill his mission, Tariq turns the tables to get his old adversary as well as Arafat in his own sights.

My rating: 4 stars

299. The Messenger (Daniel Silva)

Synopsis from Amazon:
Bestseller Silva continues to warrant comparisons to John le Carré, as shown by his latest thriller starring Israeli art restorer and spymaster Gabriel Allon. Ahmed bin Shafiq, a former chief of a clandestine Saudi intelligence unit, targets the Vatican for attack, in particular Pope Paul VII and his top aide, Monsignor Luigi Donati, who both appeared in Silva's previous novel, Prince of Fire. Shafiq, who now heads his own terrorist network, is allied with a militant Islamic Saudi businessman known as Zizi, a true believer committed to the destruction of all infidels. Gabriel's challenge is to infiltrate Zizi's organization, a task he assigns to a beautiful American art expert, Sarah Bancroft. Gabriel promises he'll protect her, but plans go awry, and by the end Sarah faces torture and death.

My rating: 4 stars

33. The Unlikely Spy (Daniel Silva)

Synopsis from Amazon Canada:
Alfred Vicary is an academic recruited to work for MI5. The intelligence reports he fabricates and sends to Germany are designed to persuade the Nazis that their utterly compromised spy network, the Abwehr, is still fully operational. MI5 learns, however, that the Abwehr has been keeping a few sleeper operatives under deep cover throughout the war. Now they pose a serious threat to the invasion plans. One of these operatives is Catherine Blake, a ruthless assassin and spy. Her assignment is to become romantically involved with Peter Jordan, an American engineer working on a top-secret D-Day project. Will Vicary be able to stop her?

My rating: 5 stars

My review: Good book with a great ending which makes you want to go back and read everything again.