Prince of Fire, by Daniel Silva
Filed under: Daniel Silva, Fiction, Gabriel Allon, Thriller, book review, espionage, recommendation
Prince of Fire is Daniel Silva’s fifth novel in his Gabriel Allon series. Allon is an internationally renowned art restorer, assassin, and 
In Prince of Fire terrorists bomb the Israeli embassy in Rome and massacre the people working there. And so, once more, Gabriel Allon gets a visit from the spy master of the Israeli secret service, the legendary Ari Shamron. Ari Shamron, who once was the head of Israel’s secret service and is Gabriel’s mentor, is now special advisor to Israel’s prime minister.
When Shamron visits Gabriel in Italy, he informs him that Palestinian terrorists have uncovered Gabriel’s true identity and may be targeting him for assassination. He urges Gabriel to come out of retirement. Reluctantly, as always, he returns to Israel to head a team investigating the bombing. After some difficult work, the team finds traces leading to a Palestinian mastermind named Khaled al-Khalifa. He is, as well, believed to be the brain behind two earlier terrorist attacks. Allon is now assigned to find and execute him.
As in his other books, Silva weaves facts and fiction in a rough, hard reality which is grim and requires tough decisions, especially by those involved in the espionage business. The story in Prince of Fire is, if anything, even darker than most of the stories in this series. None of the actors involved – both individuals and the organizations – are able to walk away with clean hands in this story.
Khaled al-Khalifa turns out to be perhaps the most difficult opponent Gabriel Allon has encountered so far. Both have lots of resources to back them up, and both are extremely skilled and smart.
The complex and very well told story in Prince of Fire has a lot of twists and turns, as well as false identities, double-crosses and misleading information. And the action is fast and furious: assassinations, bombings and kidnappings.
Prince of Fire is a great addition to the Gabriel Allon series. It is an excellent, very exciting spy thriller.
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,A Death in Vienna, by Daniel Silva
Filed under: Daniel Silva, Fiction, Gabriel Allon, International bestseller, Main character, Thriller, book review, espionage
A Death in Vienna deals with issues surrounding the Holocaust. 
The starting point in A Death in Vienna is the bombing of the “Wartime Claims and Inquires” offices in Vienna. This is where Gabriel Allon’s friend, Eli Lavon, works. Lavon is seriously injured in the blast, and Allon is sent to find the perpetrators of this crime. The Austrian government declares the bombing to be the work of an Islamist terrorist group. However, Mossad and Allon do not buy this explanation. Allon believes it may instead have been engineered by Nazi criminals hoping to prevent Lavon from discovering their whereabouts.
The action in A Death in Vienna takes Allon from Vienna to Israel, Italy, Argentina, the US, and back to Vienna. He gradually realizes that there are complex political, financial, and national security issues that affect a number of countries, and that the story he unfolds has its beginnings back in World War II. Erich Radek, a former Nazi with links to Auschwitz and Treblinka, who is still alive and active in Vienna, plays a prominent part in this, as does Konrad Becker, a Zurich banker who has a client with over two billion dollars in assets. Also involved, it seems, is the Vatican and the American CIA who together protected selected war criminals after the war.
The case becomes personal when Allon, who reads his mother’s account of her time in the camps “I will not tell all the things I saw. I cannot. I owe this much to the dead”, discovers that not only was Radek a sadistic monster, his mother was very nearly murdered by him.
The story told by Silva in this book is a chilling tale indeed. A Death in Vienna is, like all of Daniel Silva’s books, fast-paced, compelling, and filled with intriguing twists and turns. It is well-researched and thought-provoking. Also, of course, it is exciting and entertaining. It is also, however, a serious book telling a serious story – there are important lessons still to be learned and vital history still to be remembered in A Death in Vienna.
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