He has been called his generation's finest writer of international intrigue, one of America's most gifted spy novelists ever, and the successor to Graham Greene and John le Carre. But with his follow-up to the 2006 electrifying number one bestseller The Messenger, Daniel Silva has written his most compelling and entertaining novel to date.
When last we encountered Gabriel Allon, the master art restorer and sometime officer of Israeli intelligence, he had just prevailed in his blood-soaked duel with Saudi terrorist financier Zizi al-Bakari. Now Gabriel is summoned once more by his masters to undertake what appears to be a routine assignment: travel to Amsterdam to purge the archives of a murdered Dutch terrorism analyst who also happened to be an asset of Israeli intelligence. But once in Amsterdam, Gabriel soon discovers a conspiracy of terror festering in the city's Islamic underground, a plot that is about to explode on the other side of the English Channel, in the middle of London.
The target of this plot is Elizabeth Halton, the daughter of the American ambassador to the Court of St. James's, who is to be brutally kidnapped. Gabriel arrives seconds too late to save her. And by revealing his face to the plot's masterminds, his fate is sealed as well. Drawn once more into the service of American intelligence, Gabriel hurls himself into a desperate search for the missing woman as the clock ticks steadily toward the hour of her execution. It will take him from Amsterdam to Germany to the very end of Denmark. It will thrust him into an unlikely alliance with a man who has lost everything because of his devotion to Islam. It will cause him to question the morality of the tactics of his trade. And it might very well cost him his life.
Filled with breathtaking double and triple turns of plot, and a final mind-bending sequence that will leave readers breathless, The Secret Servant is not only a work of supreme entertainment, but also an exploration of some of the most daunting issues of our times: the war on terrorism, the weapons the West uses to wage it, and the time bomb now ticking in the heart of Western Europe.
About the Author
Daniel Silva is also the author of the bestselling novels The Unlikely Spy, The Mark of the Assassin, The Marching Season, The Kill Artist, The English Assassin and The Confessor.
Industry Reviews
"Allon is Israel's Jack Bauer...Thrill factor: *****."--USA Today "The action moves quickly, the subject matter feels impressively current, and Silva's multidimensional characters seem instantly like old friends."--The Washington Post
"A rollicking espionage thriller."--The Columbus Dispatch
"A compelling thriller...It would be difficult indeed to find a more timely novel on a more urgent topic than The Secret Servant. May there be many more novels featuring Gabriel Allon."--Tampa Tribune
"Harrowing international intrigue, all the more so for being so topical."--New York Daily News
"Nobody handles this kind of intrigue as well Silva. He gives Gabriel and the rest of his team the kind of depth seen only in spy novels by Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy."--Richmond Times Dispatch
