BETTER THAN
THE DA VINCI CODE?
Will this be ‘THE’ book of 2005?
I Confess: I loved this book! (Andrew @ Beaumaris Books)
Reviewed by David Montgomery
Gabriel Allon is a troubled man, tortured by the terrible things he has done and the even worse things he has seen. He wants nothing more in life than to spend time exercising his gift for art restoration, bringing back the magic and beauty to the works of Bellini, Michaelangelo, and other past masters of painting. Allon has another gift, though, one that is darker and deadlier: he is an assassin beyond compare. Trained by the Mossad and perfected by years of action against Black September, the PLO and a host of other terrorist organizations, Gabriel is an able tool for Israel’s righteous revenge.
In The Confessor, Allon is forced to leave behind his paints and brushes when Benjamin Stern, an old friend and one-time colleague, is murdered in Munich. Stern was working on a book about Pope Pius XII and the collaboration between the Catholic Church and the Nazis during World War II. An inflammatory topic, to be sure, but nobody in the Vatican would actually have a man killed, would they? That is what Gabriel must find out.
As his investigation digs deep into the mysteries of the past, Allon discovers dark secrets that the Church does not wish ever to be revealed. More alarmingly, he finds that the sins of the past live on in the events of the present. Soon the hunter finds himself the target of a deadly campaign to keep this Pandora’s Box of deception firmly closed.
First introduced in The Kill Artist (2000), Allon also appeared in last year’s excellent The English Assassin. He is a superior protagonist for a series like this, superbly skilled and cold-blooded, yet still possessing a heart that bleeds for the horrors of the world. He makes a refreshing change from the one-dimensional killers who populate so many suspense novels, possessing as he does the soul of an artist and the mind of a poet.
Silva’s story, and the characters that populate it, will no doubt offend and even outrage some readers, particularly those of the Catholic faith. His skills as a reporter and researcher, though, enable him to craft a fictional plot around a hard kernel of truth. Even if there is no one like Silva’s villains in the church today – and nobody is saying there is – there is still a great deal in the Vatican’s past, particularly during the war years, that has yet to be fully explained.
With the death of Robert Ludlum in 2001, the thriller field has been thrown wide open for the next generation of writers to come along and attempt to match the prowess of the late master. Daniel Silva is, so far, the ablest successor to emerge. Although he will never replace Ludlum, it looks like he is going to assume a very comfortable place to his side.
VANISHING ACT OF ESME LENNOX will be one of the unmissable publishing events of 2006.Ladies and gentlemen behold. It is most important to keep yourself very still. Even breathing can remind them that you are there, so only very short, very shallow breaths. Just enough to stay alive. Set between the 1930s, and the present, Maggie O’Farrell’s new novel is the story of Esme, a woman edited out of her family’s history, and of the secrets that come to light when, sixty years later, she is released from care, and a young woman, Iris, discovers the great aunt she never knew she had.The mystery that unfolds is the heartbreaking tale of two sisters in colonial India and 1930s Edinburgh – of the loneliness that binds them together and the rivalries that drive them apart, and lead one of them to a shocking betrayal.
