A Death in Vienna by Daniel Silva
The fourth installment of the Gabriel Allon series, and the third and final installment of the superbly crafted mini-series, within the series, where Silva confronts 'unfinished business of the Holocaust'. "A bombing at the Austrian Wartime Claims and Inquiries office leaves chief investigator Eli Lavon near death. Undercover Mossad agent Gabriel Allon, protagonist of the two previous novels, is ordered by Israeli spymaster Ari Shamron to ferret out the perpetrator. Allon is reluctant-he's working as an art restorer on one of Bellini's great altarpieces in Venice-but Eli is an old friend from the secret service, and duty calls. The case becomes personal when Allon, reading 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 chase is long and complex as agents from a number of international spy groups circle and harass Allon as he hunts down the infamous and still deadly Radek." (Publisher's Weekly).
Although the storyline is deep and intense, it involves the Holocaust, how can it not be?...the pace is swift, the plot mind-blowing, and the characters are being developed more intimately and precise with each additional book in the series. I love this series. As a Christian who prays for Israel and regularly studies the children of God within the Word of God, I love reading about Israel's more current history within the telling of fiction and non-fiction. And too, thankfully, Silva's already written 15 books in the series so I have along way to go until I 'finish' the series and am anxiously awaiting another book to be written (like I have to do with J.D. Robb's In Death series).
New Rating: 9.0