The Secret Servant (Gabriel Allon)
by Daniel Silva
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Book Reviews of The Secret Servant (Gabriel Allon)
Book Review: Glad I Bought It!!!!
Summary: 4 Stars
Audio - Review of Secret Servant
Plot - Quick, flowing, until the very end, the bit about the wedding could have been left out or confined to a quick five or ten minute, at the most a short chapter. It was nice to know they finally did get married but the details, I found to be unnecessary.
The story was not only timely but also very realistic; the course of events could have easily been written in any newspaper. But we the reader or listener, get to hear or read all those little details that couldn't be released to the public. There's something tantalizing about knowing the details that the author stated that were not released in any official document. Pretend that only you and the characters are privy (along with the thousands of other people who read the book) to the book's `For Your Eyes Only' information.
Characters - I will definitely read or listen to more books in the series. I loved the characters. I found the fact that the main character not only serves in an intelligence role but is able to maintain a separate and normal existence as an art restorer as a relief to all those other one dimensional James Bond types. Gabriel Allon, the main character is perfect for the simple reason he isn't. He has to do what he has to do. He is not without feelings but he knows when and where those feeling are appropriate. He's not some young stud that runs around bedding women without a second thought; he has an ex-wife with major problems, though I wasn't sure of details. But still it's wasn't dismal, sad but it didn't drown in self-pity. I plan to go back and read the rest of the books in the series after I read Moscow Rules. He's a man who's lost a child, a grown son, so you know he's not some young whippersnapper. He's intelligent, well organized, a man that you want to know, at least as an art restorer.
The majority of the rest of the characters were well rounded, enjoyable and at times, scary. I wanted to know more about the characters and not just the good guys. It would be nice to learn what happened to them after the book ended which to me indicated an emotional investment that I developed for the characters. The use of characters were perfect, some had small but crucial roles.
Settings - Wonderfully described, detailed without being boring or slowing the story down.
Narrator - Excellent, I enjoyed the narrator's work a great deal, while the voices of the females character were not perfect, they within a tolerant range. It's not easy for a man to do a female voice without it sounding awful or laughable. Don't get me wrong it's no better for a female doing a male voice. It is truly an art when a narrator can nail the voice of a character of the opposite sex.
Bottom line, a fantastic book with great characters and a terrific story.
Book Review: Hardliner
Summary: 3 Stars
The latest crisply efficient entry from the increasingly infuriating Daniel Silva spins another tale of the Mossad's moral superiority. The action's good here and the book's more enjoyable than recent entries in the series. Israel takes on the thankless burden of battling evildoers on behalf of the clueless West with their delusions of multiculturalism (really just an extension of their innate anti-Semitism.) Their covert actions are "works of art" while other intelligence agencies are incompetent or worse, hampered by ridiculous qualms about torture and rendition.
Amid the action there's the inclusion of what Gore Vidal dubbed "the mirror scene", when our main character stands in front of his reflection and remarks on his appearance or reflects on his conscience. It's a brief scene here, as our hero Gabriel Allon has few regrets, as he never takes out innocent people - a laughable assertion from any secret service's covert assassin. (Although to be fair, when he threatens to have a young mother and her child raped and tortured, he's only bluffing.) Elsewhere, Allon debates Mid East history and politics in large chunks of verbiage that wouldn't be out of place on the National Review website. It's hard not to sense the author intruding in on things here. When Allon offers a shrill critique of the movie Munich, which he proudly hasn't seen -- it's the author who looks foolish.
Like the last book in the series the plot hinges on the fate of one white American woman in the hands of swarthy Middle Easterners. (In both cases these women secretly pine for the strong, silent and dreamy Allon. He's seriously affianced, however, and we get some pretty tedious wedding planning in the course of the book.) Indeed, while villains in the story kill maybe hundreds of innocent people everyone here - including the American President - are singularly preoccupied with the fate of this one woman.
I've read all the Allon books; I don't think there's ever been a sympathetic Arab character in any of them. There's one candidate here, an Egyptian academic who's seen the light after having the jihad tortured out of him by other Egyptians.
And the villains are so dead set against modernity they've apparently never even seen Goldfinger, and blow two perfectly good chances to kill Allon so they can share their plans with him.
Book Review: Already Obsolete
Summary: 3 Stars
This well-written book with its compelling story held my attention throughout. The fast-paced story is exciting and Silva does a good job of capturing the "street feel" of the locales in which the various scenes are set.
The characterizations, however, are one-dimensional. The bad guys are completely bad, totally without nuance. The good guys are noble defenders of freedom and democracy - that's "freedom" and "democracy" in the George W. Bush style.
In the end, I found Gabriel Allon to be a quite despicable character. He looks forward to killing the bad guys and does so with efficiency. He expresses mild unease at the need to torture, but then goes ahead and tortures with relish. Silva could have made his character more appealing and sympathetic had he endowed him with some doubts and misgivings, some sleepless nights about the things he has to do.
As I read this after the recent US election, this novel seemed strangely obsolete. Like one of the many excellent Soviet-era spy thrillers where the fundamental conflict no longer exists. At the end of 2008 it is clear that western governments, led by the United States, have done the world much more harm than all the terrorists who have operated since the concept of terrorism was developed in the 1960s. So presenting agents of these governments in heroic fashion creates a dissonance that a fine story cannot overcome. The idea that all Muslims are terrorists for example. Silva's characters spout the standard lines about the few spoiling it for the many, but the only Muslims we meet in the book are either current or former terrorists.
A good book for 2004. Obsolete today.
Book Review: thrilling
Summary: 5 Stars
Daniel Silva keeps outdoing himself. It seems every new book is better than the last. In The Secret Servant. Israeli intelligence works to thwart an extremist Muslim plot to overthrow the United States.
This is more of an aside than a review of this exceptionally good thriller. You may have heard the expression, Be careful what you wish for. Extremist Muslims plot to overthrow the United States; if you ask me, they are out of their minds. Nature abhors a vacuum; humanity abhors a power vacuum. In the highly unlikely event that anybody did manage to overthrow the United States, China would be the world's superpower. Speaking as an inveterate Sinophile, I have to say that if the Arabs displeased the Chinese enough to bring Chinese brawn and methods to deal with them, any surviving Muslim extremists would carry photos of George Dubya Bush in their wallets, to gaze at fondly and kiss in loving remembrance. Riling Uncle Sam is not the same as riling Dragon Hua.
Be that as it may, the extremists probably do not really want the overthrow of the US or Israel, because, as Silva points out, the US and Israel provide wonderful scapegoats and whipping boys. If the US and Israel disappeared tomorrow, fundamentalists might have to face themselves and deal with their own shortcomings; far easier to blow yourself up with explosives!
The book has a fast pace, tight construction, excellent writing, and even humor in there among the terror. Silva has produced a great thriller - again!
Book Review: The Sound Is No Secret
Summary: 2 Stars
The premise is intriguing; a terrorist plot perpetrated at locations around London causes death, destruction and a diversion to the kidnapping of the daughter of the ambassador from the United States.
Through a mysterious link used by a murdered author - who had maneuvered within the shadows of terrorism and intelligence - Israeli spy Gabriel Allon finds himself on the trail of the perpetrators and the mysterious mastermind who goes by the codename of the "Sphinx."
Author Daniel Silva does a masterful job in linking stories culled from the front pages of newspapers and magazines - along with little-known historical facts - to lend an air of credibility the pursuit through Europe, but ultimately falls short with the use of typical scenarios found in less than thrilling thrillers.
Allon has unbelievable recuperative powers - though he is viciously pistol-whipped, assaulted by several thugs and near a massive explosion - which makes him more super hero than human agent. The dialogue between Allon and the terrorists seems best in a cartoon-styled plot, as the tough guy banter sounds like boasting juveniles on a school playground. And there are story lines that come to an abrupt halt, which lead to many more puzzling questions than answers.
Silva has built a franchise with the exploits of Allon. But this novel builds up to a large thud...and it isn't just the noise of the bad guys getting their comeuppance in the end.