Talk show host Hugh Hewitt has been promoting Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon spy novels for some time, so I finally tried one. I’m happy to report that Portrait of a Spy is an excellent novel, well-written, well-plotted, with engaging, believable characters. I highly recommend it, while at the same time confessing that I probably won’t be reading any more in this series. My reasons are not aesthetic or moral or political. More below.
Gabriel Allon is a skilled, even legendary Mossad agent whose working cover is his vocation as an art restorer, one of the best in the world. At the start of this novel, late in the series, he has at last broken his ties with Israeli intelligence, and is living with his beautiful wife in a secluded cottage on the Cornish coast. He’s excited about his latest commission, a recently identified lost Titian masterpiece.
And then one day, while visiting London, he witnesses a suicide bombing, one in a series of such bombings across Europe. He is drawn into the hunt for the masterminds, first back with Mossad, and then with the CIA as well. Their plan to locate and destroy the enemy involves a wealthy young Arabian heiress who has come (they’re pretty sure) to hate the jihadis.
No plan, as the generals say, ever survives contact with the enemy, and there are betrayals and deaths (and frustrating CIA political meddling) before the job gets done. It was all very suspenseful, and even moving.
Portrait of a Spy is a very good novel and (according to my lights) pretty much entirely on the right side of the issues. I recommend it highly, with the usual cautions for language, violence, and adult situations (not explicit).
The reason I can’t go on with the series is that I discovered something in reading it that I should have realized long ago. I’m just uncomfortable with spy stories. That world of deception and betrayal is tremendously stressful for me to think about. I could never live that way. I’m a very bad liar (not, I hasten to add, because of my high moral character, but because I just don’t do it well. My face gives it away). Spending time with espionage stories makes me uneasy.
You’re probably not like that, so you’ll very likely enjoy it.
I can’t lie either. I can’t even play “Go Fish” with my granddaughter. She reads me like a Little Golden Book of the alphabet.
Based on your recommendation I checked my local library for Silva novels and checked out The Unlikely Spy. I had to put it aside less than half way through. Unlike Mr. Walker I have long been a fan of spy novels. It dates back to living in London many years ago and visiting Berlin shortly before the wall was removed. Len Deighton and John Le Carre created cloak and dagger intrigue incorporating many scenes familiar to me. I explored the nooks and crannies of those great cities imagining the tradecraft necessary to pass information or catch those evading detection.
I picked up Silva’s book looking for intrigue but found primarily deviancy. Character after character was introduced by describing their particular brand of kinkiness or indulgence. When yet another character was identified by describing their favorite perversion I said enough. The book went back to the library along with another Silva book I hadn’t even started.