Once again we pray that super­hero Israeli spy Gabriel Allon will save the day in the sev­enth book of the pop­u­lar series by Daniel Sil­va. This book is as scary as the head­lines in your dai­ly news­pa­per, begin­ning with the mur­der of a ter­ror­ism ana­lyst in Ams­ter­dam and con­tin­u­ing with a new ter­ror attack in the heart of Lon­don which has major impli­ca­tions in the U.S. In this sto­ry we learn about how the grow­ing Islam­ic rad­i­cal pop­u­la­tion is affect­ing the West­ern world. This extra­or­di­nary thriller is writ­ten well by Sil­va, an extreme­ly knowl­edge­able writer with a wealth of research back­ing his sto­ry. He engages the read­er in a page-turn­ing book that weaves real life cur­rent events and polit­i­cal intrigue with the devel­op­ing per­son­al­i­ties and inter­ac­tions of the politi­cians, intel­li­gence agents, and their loved ones in this series. 

Daniel Silva’s Allon series is great pub­lic rela­tions for Israel, edu­cat­ing about cur­rent events in the Mideast and Jew­ish his­to­ry in Europe while enter­tain­ing. We hold our breaths as we fol­low the exploits of Gabriel Allon, a sen­si­tive and intel­li­gent artist, leg­endary but low key, moral­is­tic yet real­is­tic, a deci­sive action man out in the world long­ing for an unlike­ly bit of peace in a qui­et spot in Israel. Sil­va has used Allon to deal with hot top­ics such as the Pales­tin­ian – Israeli con­flict, Swiss appro­pri­a­tion of Jew­ish-owned art con­fis­cat­ed by Nazis, and the role of the Church dur­ing the Holo­caust. We have to hope that some­where a real Allon is ready to plan a suc­cess­ful oper­a­tion to save our increas­ing­ly scary world from the next unfor­tu­nate event. In lieu of that pos­si­bil­i­ty, I eager­ly await the next excit­ing install­ment in this series.