Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Whew. I remember this guy, Daniel Silva. He wrote the most marvelous thrillers -- action plus ideology, art, politics, a strong sense of place, memorable minor characters. Then he took a sabbatical that lasted 3 novels. Three novels in which the hero became a self-involved action figure. But now he's back. And Gabriel Allon is back in Cornwall, although not yet out to sea or in the studio. He's tracking again, but tracking down a missing Rembrandt, a portrait of the artist's mistress, a never-displayed lost treasure. Julian Isherwood is much in evidence and the watching little boy of the early novels, Peel, is now a young man and back in the picture. The coast is described in general, if not in loving particular, and it looks like Gabriel is taking on an investigation that is personally significant, but not significantly personal. While Silva -- a former reporter -- is always good at investing his plots with current issues, this meditation on the economics of art in a time of financial distress is particularly shrewd. The gap between rich and poor is exacerbated by those private collectors who buy paintings stolen from museums, only to hang them on the walls of their private galleries. So much more than monetary value is the world's loss to the Museum of the Missing. Giving his reader non-stop-thrill-ride-nail-biting-OMG action has never been a problem for Silva. (The only problem has been giving so much of it that there's no room for anything else.) Here the background and subject matter of the painting itself are gracefully woven into the fabric of the story so that the reader learns and thinks while also being riveted. The plot is more like the early books than the last 3: there's more thinking and less blood. Silva's research is both impressive and heart-breaking. He introduces a minor character in Paris who is an activist in post-Holocaust politics and with her he introduced me to the term "memory militant." In addition to being an outstanding writer, Silva is himself a dedicated memory militant who honors all aspects of that monumental subject.