The Kill Artist: (Gabriel Allon 1)

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I mean, when the President of the United States calls up Arafat in the middle of the night (he was already in DC for the peace talks)...just to come over to the White House and hang out with him because he was bored, I literally laughed out loud. Arafat also smells bombs, reads minds and has the force of personality to change peoples lives with a couple of sentences. The head of the Ottawa Station meets Shamron and Gabriel in Montreal. He reports that he and his staff followed Jacqueline and another woman from the airport to the hotel, where the woman turned Jacqueline over to a man who might be Tariq al-Hourani. Zvi also tells Shamron that King Saul Boulevard is aware that something is happening in Canada. Al-Hourani stayed by Jacqueline's side while she bought winter clothing. At the hotel, Jean, the concierge and a sayan, gives Gabriel a magnetic card key which Gabriel uses to enter al-Hourani's room to plant a bug. Gabriel then goes to the Office command post in a nearby hotel. The escape routes are planned. Another member of the Ottawa Station staff provides video of al-Hourani. Shamron says it is time to end the operation and go home. At the very beginning of the sixties, a time when social revolution swept across America, Daniel Silva was born. Although it was in Michigan that he entered the world, Silva spent his childhood in sunny California. Child of a catholic family, he converted to Judaism as an adult. Something inside Silva always told him that he was destined to be a writer; clearly his intuitions were well founded. Nevertheless, it pleased Silva to pursue international relations as his major in graduate school. Jacqueline Delacroix, a fashion model who had an affair with Gabriel, has a bad experience at a photo shoot and decides to go on a vacation. This is a bad book. A very bad book.” He opined, talking off his owl-like steel glasses with his short, stubby fingers. He pinched the bridge of his nose where the nose pieces had left deep red indentations. The very same nose that had been broken by a piece of Egyptian shrapnel during the six-day war.

I did not care for the narrator George Guidall. He made Gabriel the hero sound like a clerk or librarian. It didn’t fit the sexy macho agent. And he made the bad guy sound wimpy. Other parts were ok, but overall his voice was not as good for me as other narrators. I was disappointed the following was not shown. A woman was being trained as an agent. She was told to figure out who was following her. She reported three people and was wrong. Next time she reported three people and was right. I wanted to see what she saw and why she concluded what she did. Shamron, the key Israeli Intelligence Officer who masterminds the entire scenario, is a well-drawn character, ruthless and scheming, but rather neutral from a reader's perspective. He is shrewd and largely unpleasant.Julian Isherwood, a British art dealer who has no illusions about the fact that he is getting older and the business is not as lucrative as it once was when he was younger. Allon is his most sought-after restorer, but he also knows that Allon’s other life as a spy may drag him away from his studio work and thus ruin Isherwood. Also, Yasar arafat is psychic, caring and brilliant. The President of the US likes to have Yasar Arafat come by the White House in the middle of night to keep him company when he's bored. More about the plight and horrors the Palestinians have went through then you could possibly digest in one sitting. And Israel ain't so hot...but, it is ruthless and merciless.

Al-Hourani learns that the Office suspects him of killing the ambassador, that his next layover will be in Amsterdam and that he has been targeted for assassination by "an old friend." All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.This novel is okay, not great. Unlike my previous experience while reading a book of Mr. Silva’s I found I could easily put it down. That is not to say that I did not enjoy reading it, I did. Just that the experience was nothing spectacular.