![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/31zEFFTjMIL._AA300_.jpg?w=474\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Talk show host Hugh Hewitt<\/strong> has been promoting Daniel Silva\u2019s Gabriel Allon spy novels for some time, so I finally tried one. I\u2019m happy to report that Portrait of a Spy<\/a><\/i> 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\u2019t be reading any more in this series. My reasons are not aesthetic or moral or political. More below.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s excited about his latest commission, a recently identified lost Titian masterpiece.<\/p>\n 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\u2019re pretty sure) to hate the jihadis.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Portrait of a Spy<\/i> 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).<\/p>\n The reason I can\u2019t go on with the series is that I discovered something in reading it that I should have realized long ago. I\u2019m 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\u2019m a very bad liar (not, I hasten to add, because of my high moral character, but because I just don\u2019t do it well. My face gives it away). Spending time with espionage stories makes me uneasy.<\/p>\n You\u2019re probably not like that, so you\u2019ll very likely enjoy it. Talk show host Hugh Hewitt has been promoting Daniel Silva\u2019s Gabriel Allon spy novels for some time, so I finally tried one. I\u2019m 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\u2019t … Continue reading Portrait of a Spy, by Daniel Silva<\/span>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"