Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Rate this book!
Write a review?
Very entertaining. In this one, the stakes were higher and Gabriel was more ruthless.
Audiobook on the Indiana road trip. It's a decent story if you've read the others in the series. Otherwise, too much back story and not enough new plot.These days, Gabriel Allon spends more time reminiscing about his past adventures than jumping into new ones.
I generally reserve my highest ratings for more literary works, but I had to give this the full five stars to set it apart from other popular suspense/thriller books. This is the best one yet in the Gabriel Allon series. Exciting, fast-paced international action. Silva has really outdone himself with this one. If this turned out to be the last one ever in the series, I would be content. The amount of research done and the descriptions of the places really make this story shine. I strongly recomm...
As much as I LOVE thrillers, I was never really into espionage novels. Once I read on the back-cover words such as “Russian intelligence” or “Terrorism”, I’d lose interest.And then I stumbled upon “The Kill Artist” by Daniel Silva. It wasn’t love at first sight, but it was love alright. My aunt from NY came for a visit and told me I should read this book, so I said to myself, what the heck, and gave it a chance.By the end of the book, I’ve already fallen in love with Gabriel Allon, the Israeli s...
A solid installment in a reliable, entertaining series, but ... and, of course, none of this is really relevant to the book, but ... it was particularly gratifying (for me) reading the book while flying to and travelling through Israel ... and, as a special bonus, if my math/timing is correct, I'm now officially half-way through the series.While I was initially skeptical about the series, I'm now fully vested. Silva has done a nice job with developing characters and enriching the story with a he...
First off, this is five stars based on it being part of a series, and based on the fact I just finished it and am still feeling the adrenaline. If you haven't read the others it won't make sense, but if you have read this one NOW!Holy crap I can't even catch my breath. I love Gabriel, but I never knew what he was capable of, or that I would question whether he was doing the right thing. Vengeance is clearly neither black or white. I basically see this as part two of Moscow Rules and while that w...
The Defector by Daniel Silva (pp. 480)The latest installment of Daniel Silva’s thriller series starring Gabriel Allon, a conflicted Isreali spy is a near sequel to last year’s Moscow Rules. After finding a somewhat normal life with his new wife, Allon gets thrown back into the mix when the man he rescued in the previous book is kidnapped by a Russian arms dealer. After nine books using the same main character, Silva shows that he IS master of the genre. When other series are ready to kill off th...
There is no any sophistication of real spy novel in this particular book and in "Moscow Rules". Before these two, I read "The Secret Servant" and what still OK with it for long flights but starting from "Moscow Rules"... Probably 99 of 100 reviewers who put 4 or 5 stars on this page have never seen Moscow apart from the TV screen. I'm sure from reading your reviews that same percentage never dared to dig deeper to understand what really happens in Russia beyond what they've been fed by CNN and l...
The defector follows the tried and true Silva formula for thriller commercial success.1. Something bad happens2. Gabriel Allon (spymaster, assassin and art restorer) is minding his own business and gets approached by authority figure. He says no, they say please, he says ok. Then he broods3. Brooding done - Gabriel Allon springs into action to do the impossible with his handpicked team of colleagues (the descriptions of which are copy pasted from one book to the next) and with the help of either...
Isn't it astonishing how you don't know variation in a genre is possible until you discover that variation? For example, until I read this book I hadn't ever considered the possibility of writing a thriller with an infallible hero. And lo, here Silva has done it. Well, well, well.Do you know why I hadn't ever considered a perfect hero? Because it makes for a CRAP story. This novel is about 30% awed praise for the almighty and magnificent Israeli special agents and their special agency and the un...
Another great thriller from Mr Silva. The Defector is a bona fide sequel to its predecessor in the series, Moscow Rules. The entire series is best read in sequence I feel, but especially this time. In order to avoid spoilers I cannot say much about the plot except that the things Israeli assassin Gabriel Allon thought he had fixed in Moscow Rules did not stay fixed so he has to go back to Russia, Putin's Russia. His new wife Chiara has been kidnapped by the villain from the earlier book and Gab
Repetitive and lacks a cohesive story.1. The abduction of the female Israeli secret service agent, resulting from an uncharacteristic lapse in Israeli security, wouldn't have happened even in fiction the way it did. A poorly executed plot feature, though essential for the bigger storyline. It simply wasn't a very creative plot feature.2. The long drawn-out (and so pitifully predicable) conversation at the remote Russian dacha with the bad guy, Ivan, who uncharacteristically allows the "literary