Search - A Death in Vienna

Author: Daniel Silva

In starting this book, I’ve done what I hate to do – read book three in a trilogy before book one. All I know is now I want to get my hands on book one and book two.

The main character, Gabriel Allon, is the same in the three books, as is his life, his back story. His job – spy – is also the same. I am assuming that the individual situations he gets involved in close with the end of each book.

Since Gabriel Allon is an operative for the Israeli network, and is the son of a survivor of the Holocaust, Jewish issues and concerns figure prominently in the series. The author describes the books as “three novels dealing with the unfinished business of the Holocaust�.

This is an old-fashioned thriller with many characters in many countries. There are twists and turns. A person’s history can come back to haunt him.

A DEATH IN VIENNA by Daniel Silva In book 4 of this series, chief investigator Eli Lavon is almost killed in a bombing at the Austrian Wartime Claims and Inquiries office. Art restorer and undercover Mossad agent Gabriel Allon 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. Sturmbannführer Erich Radek's job was to erase all evidence of the Holocaust during the final days of World War II and is now known as Ludwig Vogel, chairman of the Danube Valley Trade and Investment Corporation and lives quietly in Vienna. Allon discovers that his own mother was almost one of Radek’s victims during her time in the camps. As with the previous efforts, this one is not only entertaining but also thought provoking, addressing issues some might wish to leave covered over.

I particularly enjoyed the way the story wove around the machinations of the Catholic Church while delving into the Holocaust in a way that was greatly moving and put in awesome perspective! The author never loses the thread of the story to get on any sort of platform and I rate him as a master teller of the intricacies of European history. Also, his characters are so complete and fierce but vulnerable!