Excellent
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An excellent read, Gabriel Allon is back for more and I couldn't be happier. I hope one of these books in the series of books from Daniel Silva makes it into a movie soon. I highly recommend this book along with all the previous ones.
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Does the Messenger deliver?
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In Daniel Silva's The Messenger, we meet art-restorer/Israeli spy Gabriel Allon once again. I thought the background information on Allon's past exploits through the first hundred or so pages of the book useless unless you've read those novels. I'd much rather have followed the plot unravelling with this story quicker than catch up on the series.
I didn't find this read as suspenseful or thrilling as others, but it was still a decent read.
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Read This Book If You Love Spy Tradecraft
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The spy novel genre hasn't been the same since the cold war ended. Magnificent fictional forays and counter-forays of east and west against one another with the fate of the world in the balance provided marvelous drama that led to wonderful plots, seat-squirming suspense, and intense emotional involvement with the characters. Many have tried to resurrect the spy novel genre with modern-day terror and antiterrorist activities. In most cases, these stories don't carry the same weight. It's as though we know the tales are too fanciful to be real.
In the Messenger, Daniel Silva has recaptured some of the zest of the cold war spy stories in an intense tale of an innocent sent out among the lethal to identify a terrorist leader. You'll easily find yourself imagining that you are Sarah Bancroft, a curator at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., who is recruited to infiltrate a terrorist-supporting Saudi billionaire's entourage.
The plot is quite a complex one. Gabriel Allon has been retired from spying while he quietly pursues his profession of art restorer. Israeli intelligence is checking out a terror suspect when the man is accidentally killed, leaving his laptop computer to be accessed. From the images, the Israelis conclude that the Vatican is a target. Allon is brought in to see what can be done to avoid an attack. Soon, events roll into motion that require more than prevention at the Vatican as the Israelis target a former Saudi official who seems to be running terror networks. Sarah Bancroft is recruited, and the hunt is on. Time is of the essence. Can they identify the target before the terrorists identify Sarah's true allegiances?
The book's main weakness is that connecting the book's opening to the rest of the series takes up a lot of space. If you've read the other books, you don't need that much background. If you haven't read the other books, it's still too much. Then, the development of the spy gambit takes awhile to get off the ground. As a result, not much of the good material in the book occurs before page 110. But stick around. If you are patient with the opening, you'll be pleased with the rest, especially after page 162.
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Silva continues to dazzle us
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Gabriel Allon, art restorer and professional spy/assassin, is back again in another sizzling international spy thriller. The novel starts with a bang in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican as Arab terrorists attempt to assassinate the Pope.Allon comes to the rescue and thwarts the plot.
Allon is then conscripted by his Israeli bosses to penetrate and bring down the terrorist network which orchestrated this and other plots. He recruits a young Americam art expert Sarah Bancroft to act as art adviser to the arch villain behind the network and to persuade him to purchase a fictional work by Van Gough.
Sarah is exposed and runs into a rough spot before she is rescued by Allon and the arch villain meets a suitable fate.
This and other Silva novels are part of a trend to spy novels which focus on terrorism rather than the spy novels of the Cold war which many of us were reared on.
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