The Secret Servant (Gabriel Allon, 7) - Hardcover

Silva, Daniel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399154221 ISBN 13: 9780399154225

Publisher: Putnam Adult, 2007

Synopsis

In Amsterdam, a terrorism analyst named Ephraim Rosner lies dead, brutally murdered by a Muslim immigrant. The Amsterdam police believe the killer is a deranged extremist, but others know better. Just twenty-four hours before, Rosner had requested an urgent meeting with Israeli intelligence. Now it is Gabriel Allon's job to find out what Rosner knew, and when he does, it confirms his worst fears: a major terrorist operation is in the works. But not even Allon could have predicted what it is.

In London, 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. With time running out, Allon has no choice but to plunge into a desperate search, both for the woman and for 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.

Intense and provocative, filled with breathtaking double and triple turns of plot, The Secret Servant is not only a fast-paced international thriller but an exploration of some of the most daunting questions of our time.

About this title

About the Author

Daniel Silva most recent novel is The Messenger. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, NBC News Today correspondent Jamie Gangel.

From the Inside Flap

He has been called his generation's finest writer of international intrigue, one of America's most gifted spy novelists ever, and the successor to Graham Greene and John le Carr . But with his follow-up to the 2006 electrifying number one bestseller The Messenger, Daniel Silva has written his most compelling and entertaining novel to date.

When last we encountered Gabriel Allon, the master art restorer and sometime officer of Israeli intelligence, he had just prevailed in his blood-soaked duel with Saudi terrorist financier Zizi al-Bakari. Now Gabriel is summoned once more by his masters to undertake what appears to be a routine assignment: travel to Amsterdam to purge the archives of a murdered Dutch terrorism analyst who also happened to be an asset of Israeli intelligence. But once in Amsterdam, Gabriel soon discovers a conspiracy of terror festering in the city's Islamic underground, a plot that is about to explode on the other side of the English Channel, in the middle of London.

The target of this plot is Elizabeth Halton, the daughter of the American ambassador to the Court of St. James's, who is to be brutally kidnapped. Gabriel arrives seconds too late to save her. And by revealing his face to the plot's masterminds, his fate is sealed as well. Drawn once more into the service of American intelligence, Gabriel hurls himself into a desperate search for the missing woman as the clock ticks steadily toward the hour of her execution. It will take him from Amsterdam to Germany to the very end of Denmark. It will thrust him into an unlikely alliance with a man who has lost everything because of his devotion to Islam. It will cause him to question the morality of the tactics of his trade. And it might very well cost him his life.

Filled with breathtaking double and triple turns of plot, and a final mind-bending sequence that will leave readers breathless, The Secret Servant is not only a work of supreme entertainment, but also an exploration of some of the most daunting issues of our times: the war on terrorism, the weapons the West uses to wage it, and the time bomb now ticking in the heart of Western Europe.

Reviews

Starred Review. Bestseller Silva's superlative seventh novel to feature Gabriel Allon, the legendary but wayward son of Israeli Intelligence, puts Silva squarely atop the spy thriller heap. When Solomon Rosner, a professor in Amsterdam who's also a secret Israeli asset, is assassinated for his strident reports and articles detailing the dangers of militant Islam within the Netherlands, Gabriel gets the job to clean out the professor's files. In Amsterdam, the Israeli agent and his old partner, Eli Lavon, unearth a plot that leads to the kidnapping by Islamic extremists of the daughter of the U.S. ambassador in London. While most intelligence agencies consider Gabriel persona non grata because of his unorthodox methods and the trail of bodies he leaves in his wake, he once again proves invaluable as he and his stalwart team hunt down some of Israel's—and the world's—most violent enemies. While you don't have to have read the earlier books in the series (The Messenger, etc.), knowing the history of the returning characters adds depth and color to the overall story. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Silva specializes in thrillers of international terror—a subgenre that some readers feel can be exploitative and sensationalistic, playing at terror for titillation in a post-9/11 era that really needs none. But within this squirm-producing takeoff on real events, Silva is an adept craftsman and chronicler (though his own views are often stridently presented). What really works in his novels, though, is his main character, Gabriel Allon, whose name indicates his aloneness, both in his personal life, with a wife in a psychiatric hospital and a dead son, and professionally, since he is an agent in Israel's Special Operations branch of the Foreign Intelligence Service. What makes Allon so interesting is his straight-life profession as an art restorer (he specializes in Italian Old Masters); his work gets him through many barred doors and enhances his ability to remember visual details. This time out, the murder of a sociology professor, whose recent book asserts that Holland is under attack by jihadist Islam, sends Allon to Amsterdam, where he cleans out the professor's files and discovers that five members of an Amsterdam mosque have disappeared and are plotting something big. Meanwhile, Allon is charged with finding the kidnapped daughter of the American ambassador to London. This fast-paced international espionage tale suffers a bit from clichéd prose, but it's compulsive reading nonetheless. Fletcher, Connie
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Putnam Adult
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0399154221
• ISBN 13: 9780399154225
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 385