The English Assassin (Gabriel Allon Book 2)

Great Book, Very Well Written, Extremely Well Executed Plot

While absorbing - though far from a page-turner - this so-called espionage-counter-terrorism-good-guys-Israelis-versus-Swiss-bad-guys-ex-Nazi-collaborators tale is a bit strange. You know, it seemed to me to be more like a detective story than terrorist-espionage. The long and painful solving of the mystery of the whereabouts of the stolen paintings far outweighs any assassination or killing suspense involved, though 4 or 5 people did meet their maker before the end of the book.This book is the second in the series featuring hired Israeli assassin Gabriel Allon.The plotting is inconsistent. There are times when Gabriel, in his role of protecting Anna, seems cavalier and careless. The slip-ups and mistakes could have been avoided if he had been on top of his game. The mastermind of such events, Israeli Shamron, is virtually unseen in this story. Too many coincidental events shroud the so-called skills of the various paid assassins and their teams, as well as all the bad guys. It also seems a little out of date, what with Gabriel using a camera with film in it at one time. Cameras with film disappeared from our lives in the 1990's, no?It's also slow moving -- meandering even. I wrote a note on page 78, "Waiting for the story to begin." The title character bad guy (as well as hero Gabriel) has a conscience, which overpowers his training and instinct to kill. Very strange and unusual indeed. Anna, the violinist, is the most interesting character, way overshadowing even Gabriel, the art-restorer Israeli assassin-for-hire, the main character in this series of stories by Silva.The dominant bad guy is not the English assassin at all, but is instead a Swiss security guy, who double-dealt his way through a seedy career of protecting the secrets and sordid past of 1940s Swiss dealings and money-grubbing collaboration with Nazi Germany. If anything, this book is a searing and soaring indictment of Switzerland, from top to bottom, from start to finish, from old days to today. It's a scathing merciless slap at the most infamous "neutral" country on earth. Gerhard, the soul-less Swiss bad guy, gets his comeuppance in spades, before he finds his conscience. The reader, unfortunately, does not revel in this part of the adventure at the hands of Gabriel and company as much as Gabriel and Silva do. If you like to read historical fiction, this book may be just for you. If you are looking for a modern espionage spy thriller, you will be disappointed.All-in-all, the book is rather weak, though the characters are interesting and the history lesson (be as it is, true or not) is useful, confrontational and provocative. Even the final pages -- Gabriel's big mistake and his eventual fate in the hands of those he seeks to bring down -- are anti-climactic and not riveting. The wrap-up final 15 pages are epilogue. This book is not Silva's best work by a long shot. It's kind of a lazy effort, actually, even if the plot and history are engaging on the surface.I give it a 3 and feel generous doing so.

Silva is a master when creating the background for his stories. Then as he begins to incorporate all the nuances of tale and each character he brings the reader into that secret place where he intends the reader to arrive and say, “ ah yes”.

“The English Assassin” is the second novel in the series by Daniel Silva that follows the adventures of ex Israeli agent (and art restorer) Gabriel Allon. This text has given me no reason to stop reading the series.I am sure the series is a bit formulaic, it is becoming obvious even in book # 2 (there are 17 books in this series as of today) but that is to be expected with the genre. And I could do without the hero having a fling with the femme fatale of the piece, but the stories are intriguing and Silva is a good storyteller and writer, unlike many who write in this genre.This book focuses on the Swiss looting of art treasures and collaboration with the Nazis during WW II. This is not speculative, it happened. Mr. Silva interweaves this historical travesty within an interesting caper that also gives the reader a lot of details about music, especially classical violin pieces and mid twentieth century art and its place in the World War. You actually learn some things in this text.I was impressed with how skillfully and convincingly Silva gets in the mind of a great musician while they are playing. It is some of the best writing in the book when he puts us in the head of a virtuoso violinist as she wrestles with the music in private practice sessions. He has also created an interesting character (the assassin of the title) who is a secondary character in the book but an intriguing one. I hope we see more of him in the series.I see book # 3 in my near future.

This is a fairly captivating book, if you like Daniel Silva, which I do. If it didn't have his narrative flair, his pretty entertaining plots and his vivid characters, I would have given it only three stars. But I do have to say that when you get to the end, the plot is a bit too "optimistic", and therefore not entirely realistic It also suffers from a number of repetitive references from other Gabriel Allon books involving the Israeli intelligence services. But I can't fault Silva too much for that. Readers may not have read other "Allon" books, so the characters and the references may be new to them. While interesting international locations are utilized, the book tells us almost nothing about the locales. If you don't like digressive descriptions of streets, hotels, stores bars and beaches, etc... then you will like the absence thereof. All in all, pretty and worth the time for a diverting for an international spy/terrorist/murder story.

I like the size of this paperback book not small like some of the others

A long time ago, when I first discovered Daniel Silva, I started by reading the eighth Gabriel Allon thriller ` Moscow Rules '. Seven books later I decided it would be an excellent idea to go back to the very beginning, read ` The Kill Artist ' and find out how it all started. I wasn't disappointed and `The Kill Artist' easily merited those five stars. `The English Assassin' is the second book in the Gabriel Allon saga but, unfortunately, it fails to live up to the promise of the first book.It starts well and, within a few pages, Gabriel is commissioned to restore an Old Master in Zürich on behalf the client of a London art dealer he's worked with on many occasions. His life quickly become very complicated: the Raphael painting is most definitely there but his erstwhile employer is lying on the floor clearly assassinated.The story takes Gabriel and Israeli intelligence into the murky world of Swiss banking and the search for paintings looted by the Nazis during World War II - paintings that have either vanished or hidden in the vaults of various Swiss private banks. If Daniel Silva had simply developed this theme, including that secretive cabal of Swiss bankers/industrialists determined to protect the historic status of Swiss banking, I'm sure we have ended up with a first-class thriller.But, as we finally meet Otto Gessler, the mastermind banker behind that secretive cabal - plus the English assassin of the title - the story loses continuity and deteriorates sharply. Otto Gessler is completely unbelievable whilst the shadowy English assassin, who plays a major and extremely creditable role in several later Gabriel Allon thrillers, is equally unbelievable and contributes little to the story.`The English Assassin' merits just two stars - plus the hope that ` The Confessor ', the third book of the Gabriel Allon saga, will live up to the earlier promise of `The Kill Artist' - and several of Daniel Silva's later thrillers. Moscow RulesThe Kill ArtistThe Confessor

In the second book of the series, art-restorer and former Israeli secret agent Gabriel Allon is hired by a swiss banker to work on an old painting. When he gets to the banker's mansion, he finds him shot in the head and gets arrested by the police. After being released, Gabriel starts investigating the murder with the help of the banker's only daughter, Anna. Both of them find some obscure business deals from the past that a group of powerful people tries to protect at all costs, including hiring a notorious assassin known as the Englishman to stop their investigation permanently.Given the book title, I was surprised by how the Englishman thread turned out to end. It was as surprising as disappointing, because in the end if we took the Englishman chapters off the plot wouldn't suffer a bit. It would be enough to know a hit had been ordered on Gabriel and Anna, and we'd be spared to a superstitious near-mystic assassin figure that turns out to have a strange moral conscience.I also found unsatisfying the way Mr. Silva solved the difficult situation Gabriel was put on near the end. It had happened before in "The Kill Artist" and it happened again here, as the most difficult knots were untied by unlikely actions made by his opponents.Anyway it was a pleasant book to read. The immoral business relations Switzerland had during WWII is a quite interesting theme and the pace keeps us wanting to read the following chapter.+: pace and subject-: the english assassin character is as odd as inconsequent to the plot; incoherent actions have huge implications on how the story ends=: nice thriller story that made me want to read the series' next books

The second in the series these are great travel books . fast moving and entertaining. Two assassins on a collision course, dodgy Swiss bankers, sins of the past. All in all a great read for a wet train journey!

Have come back to this author and have decided to read them in order. Good read, cracks along at a good pace, the characters and plot are good. Always set against good historical and factual backgrounds, so it's almost like learning something without realising it. A good page turner and worth a read.

Found the book to be a bit repetitious from other novels he has written. Don't mind the character he uses, but it just seems like some of the aspects of the novel have been used before.