I’ve been in a spy novel mood lately and, eventually, found myself circling back to the Gabriel Allon series. I read the first ten books years ago when I had something people call “free time.” I liked the idea of an art restorer as a spy and it was neat to see things from the perspective of the Mossad but like a lot of series, it lost its originality after a while and I put it aside. When researching which book to come back to, I grabbed this one and did the cursory Goodreads glance. Lining the page was a host of one-star reviews, even though overall the book was worth 4. As I said, I quit the series eleven books ago so maybe others agreed with me that it had lost its saltiness?
But then I read the reviews and a commonality emerged: Daniel Silva was daring to take on Russian influence on the MAGA movement. That’s why all of these people were so peeved.
I have to laugh. It’s fine for them when Gabriel is going against other Big Baddies in order to defend the western world but they draw the line at well-documented Russian influence in elections. These people actually can’t believe that folks in military and intelligence services take democracy seriously.
That only made me want to read the book more. It’s a familiar Allon thriller with a MAGA subplot tacked on to the end that Silva furiously wrote after 1/6. It’s clunky and I really wish Silva hadn’t deployed the stereotypical Forgotten Poor White Man character. But it’s otherwise fine.
It made me want to go back to Silva and I picked up another one of his. I doubt I’ll read through the whole catalog; I’m not really a big fan of the Israeli military apparatus at the moment. But it’s good to know there’s comfort to be had.
