A Death in Vienna, by Daniel Silva

February 13, 2009 by Nekkidblogger · Leave a Comment
Filed under: book review, Daniel Silva, espionage, Fiction, Gabriel Allon, International bestseller, Main character, Thriller

A Death in Vienna deals with issues surrounding the Holocaust. The death camps of the Reich provide the underpinnings of this intense and fast-paced novel in which the author draws attention to the collusion of governments and institutions in protecting Nazi war criminals into the present day. This is the fourth book in the highly acclaimed series about the art restorer and Israeli spy Gabriel Allon, written by New York Times bestselling author David Silva.

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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