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“Time was his most implacable foe.” (3.5 stars)There is nothing spectacular about “The Rembrandt Affair” but I enjoyed it a bit more than the last couple of books I have read in Mr. Silva’s Gabriel Allon series. Taking this novel for what it is, and getting past a few eye-rolling moments and some bits of lazy writing, this is one of the better efforts of the last 4 novels in Mr. Silva’s Allon series. The plot is slightly less serious and I guess I was just in the right mood for this kind of tale...
I've read every single Gabriel Allon book and The Rembrandt Affair (or as I call it "Gabriel Runs an Errand") is no exception. I read the entire book in the store and I'm now elated I didn't bother buying it. The plot moves along steadily enough and like most Allon books, this one WILL have you turning pages to the end. However, this book felt WAYh more formulaic than the previous ones and I feel that Silva has lost interest in these characters and just popping them out for profit.Here is the fo...
The stranger has returned.An art restorer has been murdered, and painting is missing. Gabriel Allon and his team must find the lost painting whose previous owners were holocaust victims and Nazi war criminal. The first part of the book was exciting to read when Gabriel Allon and Chiara investigate the lost painting. The second part story on billionaire man named Martin Landesmann who is an art collector, also interested in the missing painting and sells a nuclear component to Iran, was a bit for...
At times Silva forgets that his readers have memory. There are so many times he "defines" the same character by his profession or reputation that it just seems sloppy or patronizing (reader's choice)
The best writer of international intrigue has done it again. "The Rembrandt Affair" is a masterful redirection of a character and story line following the wonderful tandem offering of "Moscow Rules" and "The Defector." Daniel Silva has spun a completely different web of a story by going back to Gabriel Allon, his central character's, essence -- artist and Holocaust avenger. After the powerful "Moscow Rules" and "The Defector," I passed Silva the mantel of modern-day Robert Ludlum, I am now prepa...
The good news is that Silva's plot and style are both smooth and entrancing. The bad news is that his handedness is very uneven, blatantly labeling Israelis as heroic and Americans, British and other Europeans as either complicit or bumbling. Unfortunate as well is his characterization of Iran as a pocket of evil that will probably have to be expunged to save the heroic and eternally persecuted Israelis.It's ironic that the idea that "the enterprise of the State of Israel" as a sanctuary for and...
Like most of Silva's works, this one belongs at the head of the class. Unlike some of his works, however, this one does not suffer from a thin plot. Rather, it has a decent set of layers to the story. And the cast of regulars continues to be a nice blend of competent and capable and flawed and damaged, starting with Gabriel Allon, the art restorer and occasional (and reluctant) Israeli spy and assassin. In this outing, Allon is on the trail of a story dating back to World War II, brought to his
I really, really enjoyed reading this book. Gabriel Allon's character gets better with each book in the series and of course it is always fun to read about his lovely wife Chiara (who "ate in the same manner in which she made love, slowly and by the flickering glow of candles" - best line ever! hilarious). But actually the thing I do love about Daniel Silva's books is that in addition to being entertaining, fast-paced spy-ish books (which I so love to read at the end of a long day) - they are re...
The Rembrandt Affair is another entertaining entry in the Gabriel Allon series. It follows the same formula as the previous books but there a few beats that are different. The most notable ones beingThe place where Gabriel starts from and where he ends up at, the effects of the incidents from the previous book on the characters as well as the ending - which was surprisingly pragmatic.
This is the first book of the Gabriel Allon series that I have read--and it was quite a ride. It starts out a bit slow. Gabriel Allon is a first-class art restorer, and he is asked to help find a stolen painting. Allon says that in order to find where a piece of stolen art is going, it is usually worthwhile to find where it has been. So, he looks into the history of the painting, and finds out that it was stolen by the Nazis during World War II.As it turns out, Gabriel Allon is not only an art r...
‘The only thing more secretive than a Swiss bank is a Swiss art gallery.’Always good to catch up with a Gabriel Allon, Israeli masterspy / art restorer thriller, and this one revolves around an “unknown” painting of Rembrandt of his mistress (Hendrickje Stoffels), to round off my trifecta of Dutch art of the golden age (Girl With A Pearl Earring, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos).Gabriel and Chiarra are (allegedly) retired and living in Cornwall when he learns thorough London art dealer Julian I...
Installment number 10 - this one - sat well with me, fully meeting my needs for entertaining (and not terribly taxing) airplane-train-and-hotel reading (particularly when jet lagged). To the extent I've made it through number 10 in the series - oooh, as of right now, am I really more than halfway to being caught up? (to the extent that Silva and his protagonist Gabriel Allon are only up to number 18 in the series) - I guess that means I'm still enjoying Silva's output....While this book/installm...
I have had a nice run of finding really good novels to read and post on this summer. The Rembrandt Affair is like holding 480 pages of energy in your hand. It was an awesome read for many reasons. Daniel Silva has crafted another fine piece of work, but as many of his fans have commented on already, you were waiting impatiently for this novel and expected nothing less to be delivered. I was surprised by the size of the novel but he used every page and every word to the reader’s advantage.The Rem...
Enter a Rembrandt painting that is being restored and its restorer gets killed when the painting gets taken.Gabriel Allon and his gorgeous wife Chiara are staying in England somewhere under the radar living their lives outside of the Intelligence world. However Gabriel being a talented restorer himself the person responsible for the Rembrandt painting asks Gabriel to look into the theft.We find that once Gabriel starts hi investigation that the sins of our forefathers will feature majorly in the...
This was my first Daniel Silva novel and I have totally been missing out! In case you are also in this boat, don't feel like you have to catch up--I followed the action in this book very well.Gabriel Allon is an art restorer/expert assassin. He's retired (from killing), though, and looks forward to a peaceful retirement with his wife.Of course, things don't go according to plan. He's recruited to help find a stolen Rembrandt painting, and all hell breaks loose.At first I thought this might be a
After reading The Defector, I didn't think Silva could get any better, but I think he did just that with The Rembrandt Affair. It's so smooth! He keeps things popping and exciting, and shares a wealth of research. I envy all the globetrotting he did to prepare himself to write this story. It's been a while since I read a thriller that got my heart racing so hard that I was afraid to continue and see what would happen next. This book did that to me several times. Gabriel Allon is getting a little...
"Though the stranger did not know it, two disparate series of events were by that night already conspiring to lure him back onto the field of battle. One was being played out behind the locked doors of the world’s secret intelligence services while the other was the subject of a global media frenzy." Of course the 'stranger' is Gabriel Allon - Art Restorer and sometimes an Israeli Spy and Assassin. He is coaxed out of retirement to find a stolen Rembrandt. A painting that has cost so much blood....
Daniel Silva is an experienced best-selling author. He deserves his place on the NY Times list. His latest novel is a fascinating blend of lust, international espionage, art theft and sale, and murder. It is well-written, well-paced and almost insidiously compelling. It’s also long.Silva has peopled his thriller with a remarkable cast of characters, including a towering Swiss philanthropist, a raffish cast of thieves and murderers who are on the side of the angels, a master logician who is also
3 Stars for my first Silva, The Rembrandt Affair kept me interested but it wasn't all that exciting. Connecting a painting seized in the Holocaust to the Iranian nuclear program was a bit of a stretch. I may need to go back to the first Gabriel Allon books to get a better feel for the characters. Not bad.