Publisher's Weekly Review
Silva completes his cycle of three interconnected novels (The English Assassin; The Confessor) dealing with "the unfinished business of the Holocaust" with this superbly crafted narrative of espionage and foreign intrigue. During the later stages of WWII, Sturmbannfuhrer Erich Radek's job was to erase all evidence of the Holocaust. Radek, now known as Ludwig Vogel, is chairman of the Danube Valley Trade and Investment Corporation and lives quietly in Vienna. A bombing at the Austrian Wartime Claims and Inquiries office leaves chief investigator Eli Lavon near death. Undercover Mossad agent Gabriel Allon, protagonist of the two previous novels, is ordered by Israeli spymaster Ari Shamron to ferret out the perpetrator. Allon is reluctant-he's working as an art restorer on one of Bellini's great altarpieces in Venice-but Eli is an old friend from the secret service, and duty calls. The case becomes personal when Allon, reading his mother's account of her time in the camps-"I will not tell all the things I saw. I cannot. I owe this much to the dead"-discovers that not only was Radek a sadistic monster, his mother was very nearly murdered by him. The chase is long and complex as agents from a number of international spy groups circle and harass Allon as he hunts down the infamous and still deadly Radek. Those seeking cheap thrills should look elsewhere. Action and suspense abound, but this is serious fiction with a serious purpose. Silva keeps the pressure on the reader as well as his characters as there are important lessons to be learned and vital history to be remembered. Author tour. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Silva writes le Carre-style spy novels in which the action, despite careening across cities and continents, retains knife-edge-sharp suspense, as one man confronts a host of ingenious enemies. He brings something new to the formula, too, a hero whose day job is his real passion, not merely a cover for his spy self. Silva's hero, Gabriel Allon, is a restorer of paintings and frescoes (a large part of the fascination of this series is the care Silva takes to let the reader in on the painstaking art of restoration). Allon is also a reluctant member of Israeli intelligence, his ties to that world based on bonds of shared tragedy with his fellow spies. This time out, Allon is called to leave his restoration of a Bellini altarpiece in Venice when an old friend and contact--head of the Wartime Claims and Inquiries office--dies in an al-Qaeda-related bombing in Vienna. Allon's search in the Austrian city (rendered in suitably sinister office blocks and cafes that suggest the classic film noir The Third Man) leads him to a suspected Nazi war criminal and down a path of tortuous memories. Scrupulously avoiding the whiplash that comes from too much action in too many places in too short a time (an endemic condition in lesser spy novels), this finely wrought thriller reads like an exquisitely suspenseful chess game. --Connie Fletcher Copyright 2004 Booklist
Library Journal Review
In the conclusion to his Gabriel Allon trilogy, Silva puts his art restorer and assassin on the trail of a Nazi war criminal. Following the bombing of an Israeli war claims office in Vienna, Gabriel discovers that an elderly Austrian businessman, Erich Radek, was responsible for destroying evidence of the Holocaust. The case against him includes an account offered by Gabriel's mother, who witnessed a particularly heinous crime. The pursuit takes Gabriel through Europe, then to Israel, Argentina, and the United States. Matters are complicated by Erich's connection to the CIA and by the revelation that the likely next Austrian prime minister is his son. Silva balances history, action, and moral issues expertly. While British reader John Lee handles an assortment of accents quite well, he needs to refine his American voices. Recommended for popular collections.-Michael Adams, CUNY Graduate Ctr. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
