Well, I’ve just finished a book, a fella by the name of Daniel Silva’s latest contraption, An Inside Job. It’s the twenty-fifth go-round for his Israeli secret-agent man, Gabriel Allon, a man who, if you believe the stories, has a knack for art restoration as he does for getting into and out of scrapes. This time he’s wading through the sticky bog of Vatican politics, which, as a wise man once said, is a bit like trying to find a clean shirt in a pigsty—a mostly futile exercise. Throw in some sharp-toothed Italian crooks and a bunch of high-faluting art shenanigans, and you’ve got yourself a proper yarn.
My rating for An Inside Job — 4
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Now, I’ll be honest with you, this book is as formulaic as a Sunday sermon, and the surprises, if you can call them that, were as surprising as a dog barking at a cat. And that Allon fella, he’s about as fond of changing his ways as a politician is of telling the truth. But I’ll be damned if I didn’t enjoy it. Silva writes with a sort of sly, knowing grin, as if to say, “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about all this spy business, it’s mostly a grand old farce.” I found it a more agreeable read than the last one, with its feel of a good, sturdy, “cozy mystery,” as the young folk say, though this one has more gunfire than a missing teapot.
I’ve been following Allon’s adventures for a good long spell, and I reckon it’s a smart move that Mr. Silva has started giving the stage to the other actors in his little theater. The supporting cast, you see, has grown a good deal more interesting than our main man, and that’s just fine by me. It keeps the whole shebang feeling familiar, like an old shoe, but with a fresh lick of paint.
Curiously enough, the book turned out to be less about a stolen painting and more about the dirty business of finance—a world I understand about as well as I do the finer points of a da Vinci, which is to say, not at all. But I found this part of the tale rather fascinating, watching a bunch of fellas move money around in ways that would make a shell-game artist blush.
The whole thing is a fast-paced jaunt, a tight little puzzle, with scenery so vivid you could almost smell the pasta sauce and hear the locals gabbling. And there’s a certain comfort in spending time with a familiar bunch of characters, even if one of them is a perpetually unchanging master spy and art restorer.
The Story, In Short
Our man, Gabriel Allon, gets roped into helping a high-placed friend—a predicament that seems to befall him with the regularity of a sunrise. This time, there’s a painting in the Vatican that might have been painted by Leonardo da Vinci himself, and it’s gone missing. To make matters worse, a young intern in the Vatican’s art department has turned up dead.
Allon, bless his heart, starts poking around and uncovers a web of lies stretching from the holy halls of the Vatican to the gilded cages of billionaires and the shadowy corners of the Italian mafia. All the while, he’s got to juggle his own family life and the assorted friends and frenemies who are risking their necks to help him. It’s a messy business, but then again, that’s what Allon does best.
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More Books by Daniel Silva*
Zohar — Man of la Book
Disclaimer:I bought this book.
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