About:
Ransom by Daniel Silva is the 26th novel of his long-time series featuring Gabriel Allon. Mr. Allon has been officially retired from Israeli intelligence for some time now, but his world keeps pulling him back in.
- 416 pages
- Publisher : Harper
- Language : English
- ISBN-10 : 0063384221
Thoughts:
My rating for Ransom – 5
Buy Ransom from Amazon.com*
The Gabriel Allon book series*
More Books by Daniel Silva*
This is the best "retired Gabriel Allon" book so far. I enjoyed all of them, but this one was a roaring ride from start to finish.
Ransom by Daniel Silva weaves "ripped from the headlines" geopolitical tensions, along with international and financial intrigue. The pacing is excellent, the dialog sharp, and the action exciting.
I enjoyed that this time Gabriel Allon is taking a managerial role, more than an active operative role, especially in the second half of the book. It's almost as if he's a fish out of water, an analog spy in a digital world.
Man of la Book's Margin Notes: An Analog Spy in a Digital World
The element of Ransom that I enjoyed the most, to no one's surprise, is the technical aspect of it, with Gabriel Allon trying to swim in a binary ocean. Allon, an old school spy, is forced to operate in a digitized environment for much of the novel.
1. Legacy Firmware vs. Cloud-Native Threat Vectors
Gabriel Allon cut his chops and paid his dues during the Cold War. The decades that followed he refined his skills in physical surveillance, dead-drops, art forgery analysis, and close-quarters human intelligence (HUMINT).
Many don't realize how quickly technology moves, and Allon found himself and his legacy tradecraft operating in an operation theater that's in the "cloud". Finding someone is not as difficult as it used to be since everyone has a tracker on them (cellphone) and are telling everyone in the world where they are vie social media posts. Of course, deep cyber-reconnaissance and manipulation of finances are still difficult to execute and track, but certainly not impassive.
Gabriel Allon navigating these digital waters highlights the reality which many find difficult to accept classic tradecraft can quickly become an execution bottleneck when going head-to-head against automated, high-speed exploits.
2. Deprecating the Human Access Key
Charm, intuition, and personal networks to get through backdoors were always master spy extraordinaire Gabriel Allon's strengths. Retired, living off the grid (but not really) as a private art restorer, he finds that his access has been woefully downgraded. When Edward Knight puts him in charge of investigating the disappearance of his wife Alice Winters, Mr. Allon finds that traditional methods such as physical interrogations yield far less actionable data than tracing her digital devices and social-media footprints. This old school spy is forced to rely on others to interact with systems he cannot query directly himself, forcing the spy master to be dependent on tools which are outside his mastery.
3. Air-Gapping vs. Systemic Infiltration
I mentioned that Gabriel Allon and his family try to live off the grid, but not really. They spend their time between Venice, Italy and Cornwall, England to disconnect from the geopolitical enemies that might be still hunting him and their kids secure. In Ransom, however, author Daniel Silva demonstrates that in an era of globalized cyber-kinetic warfare, privacy and isolation are myths.
Any identity, even if it was on the Internet for seconds, remains indexed in state actor databases, hostile and friendly alike. The operatives of one's geological adversaries can easily test the reachability of your device by sending data packets to it (ping), and listing for Echo Reply responses. Gabriel Allon, our analog spymaster, cannot simply sit back and airgap himself and his family in total isolation from the digital network which is all around us. All it takes is just one false move, even for a few seconds, for his adversaries to reach him (if they're looking, or even care). We all know, but the sad news, for most people, is that we're not that interesting and state-actors don't care about us, Gabriel Allon is not so lucky.
As intelligence operations shift permanently from human intuition to algorithmic processing and drone warfare, can traditional, analog spymasters like Gabriel Allon remain relevant, or are they destined to become obsolete artifacts of a bygone era?
The fish out of water story is not new, but I wasn't expecting it in this book, and it was refreshing to read about Gabriel Allon being out of his depth. He doesn't need a crew of experts at his side and is probably impressed that he can get just as much done with a genius hacker at his side.
The slow burn of the first part, where slow and tedious negotiations take place, contrasts with the second half of the book where more the one life of a rich socialite is in danger. The change, in my opinion, was sharp and fast, and I would have preferred it to be a bit slower and more espionage-like.
But that's a small quip, we can all be a bit critical of a book we've been waiting a year to read -this one hasn't disappointed. The move from focusing on classic art to geopolitical thriller was the right call to make.
Synopsis:
Alice Wnter, wife a real estate Mogul Edward Knight vanished mysteriously while on vacation on Ibiza. Mr. Knight buys one of Gabriel Allon's restorations and gives him his, for all intents and purposes, unlimited sources to find his wife.
But as Gabriel digs dipper, the kidnapping becomes global conspiracy involving Russian oligarchs, operatives, and even Putin himself. Mr. Allon must navigate a new world of cyber warfare and weapons in order to get ahead of his enemies, if he can.
Buy Ransom from Amazon.com*
The Gabriel Allon book series*
More Books by Daniel Silva*
Zohar — Man of la Book
Disclaimer: I bought this book.
*Amazon links point to an affiliate account, the money is usually spent on books
