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| The Fallen Angel |
After a few disappointing books in his Gabriel Allon series, I think Daniel Silva’s The Fallen Angel might be a return to form. I was completely hooked once Silva started peeling away the layers of conspiracy between a murder at St. Peter’s Basilica and a terrifyingly audacious terrorist plot. I couldn’t predict anything that was going to happen next, which makes a wonderful change from the most recent books in the series.
The mystery begins when the Pope’s personal secretary asks the legendary spy to investigate what appears, at the first cursory glance, to be a suicide right in St. Peter’s. But it doesn’t take long for the secretary and Gabriel to realize that the victim, a Vatican curator, was murdered for discovering that numerous works of art and antiquities have gone missing from the Vatican’s collections. After some more digging, Gabriel finds that these missing works have been used to fund Hezbollah. From there, a small but interesting mystery develops into a wild ride to stop a massive terrorist plot. I can’t give away any more details, because it would give away a brilliant plot twist.
But the plot twist does bring up an interesting–but probably unsolvable question–will there ever be peace in Israel? Eddie Izzard once asked, in jest of course, why three major religions couldn’t have spread out their holy sites a bit more? Muslims, Jews, and Christians are all squabbling over the same turf in violation of tenets they profess to uphold (like loving thy neighbor among others). Instead,we get conflicts like the the Immovable Ladder at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. (Read it. It’s hilarious.) And that’s just Christian sects fighting with each other, not separate religions. I’m sure I won’t see peace in Israel in my lifetime.
I wonder how many more of these there will be. Throughout the book, there are references to Gabriel’s age. He’s been active since 1972 and all of his adventures since then have been extremely dangerous and taxing. He’s been close to death so many times I’ve lost count; he’s left blood all over Europe and the Middle East. So not only do I wonder how many times Silva can come up with inventive twists, but also how long it will be plausible for Gabriel to be dodging bullets.