Portrait of a Spy by Daniel Silva

Book:  Portrait of a Spy 

Author:  Daniel Silva 

Grade:  C 

Recommended To:  Gabriel Allon fans, people who like to paint. 

This is the 45th or so book in the Gabriel Allon series.  Daniel Silva has really hit a gold mine with this group of characters and sometimes in series novels there are hits and there are misses.  This book wasn't exactly a miss, but it wasn't as good as some of the others in the series.

I don't want to sound sacrilegious, but it might be time for Gabriel Allon to retire for good - I love his character and I love the books, but I think each time there is a new book, it gets even more far fetched that Gabriel and his wife would come out of retirement against for one last mission.   This has happened at least twice already and I can't picture the series doing much else except having singular missions for Gabriel to perform for each book.

This book did have a good story line - there is a new network of Islamic terrorists that planted bombs in three European cities, Gabriel is called in by his old friend Aaron Carter, the American, to take apart the network.   He succeeds of course, but not before getting captured and nearly killed.

This book had lots of twists and turns, some return appearances by characters that I didn't think we would see again, and a lot of drama between Israel, America and Britain.  Definitely a solid read but the story took too long to get started and seemed to be a repeat of The Rembrandt Affair.  But, because I think Gabriel Allon is the hottest middle aged spy to ever be created by a novelist - I will keep reading these books.

Happy Reading!!