Prince of Fire [Paperback]

Daniel Silva (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio (1980)
• ASIN: B000N6AW4K
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (92 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,683,449 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

He has been called his generation's finest writer of international intrigue and one of the greatest American spy novelists ever. Compelling, passionate, haunting, brilliant: these are the words that have been used to describe the work of #1 New York Times-bestselling author Daniel Silva.

Silva burst onto the scene in 1997 with his electrifying bestselling debut, The Unlikely Spy, a novel of love and deception set around the Allied invasion of France in World War II. His second and third novels, The Mark of the Assassin and The Marching Season, were also instant New York Times bestsellers and starred two of Silva's most memorable characters: CIA officer Michael Osbourne and international hit man Jean-Paul Delaroche. But it was Silva's fourth novel, The Kill Artist, which would alter the course of his career. The novel featured a character described as one of the most memorable and compelling in contemporary fiction, the art restorer and sometime Israeli secret agent Gabriel Allon, and though Silva did not realize it at the time, Gabriel's adventures had only just begun. Gabriel Allon appears in Silva's next nine novels, each one more successful than the last: The English Assassin, The Confessor, A Death in Vienna, and Prince of Fire, The Messenger, The Secret Servant, Moscow Rules, and The Defector. Silva's forthcoming novel, The Rembrandt Affair, will be published on July 20, 2010.

Silva knew from a very early age that he wanted to become a writer, but his first profession would be journalism. Born in Michigan, raised and educated in California, he was pursuing a master's degree in international relations when he received a temporary job offer from United Press International to help cover the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. Later that year Silva abandoned his studies and joined UPI fulltime, working first in San Francisco, then on the foreign desk in Washington, and finally as Middle East correspondent in Cairo and the Persian Gulf. In 1987, while covering the Iran-Iraq war, he met NBC Today National Correspondent Jamie Gangel and they were married later that year. Silva returned to Washington and went to work for CNN and became Executive Producer of its talk show unit including shows like Crossfire, Capital Gang and Reliable Sources.

In 1995 he confessed to Jamie that his true ambition was to be a novelist. With her support and encouragement he secretly began work on the manuscript that would eventually become the instant bestseller The Unlikely Spy. He left CNN in 1997 after the book's successful publication and began writing full time. Since then all of Silva's books have been New York Times and international bestsellers. His books have been translated in to more than 25 languages and are published around the world. Silva continues to reside in Washington with his wife and teenage twins Lily and Nicholas. When not writing he can usually be found roaming the stacks of the Georgetown University library, where he does much of the research for his books. He is currently at work on a new Gabriel Allon novel and warmly thanks all those friends and loyal readers who have helped to make the series such an amazing success.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

89 of 95 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Silva is superb., February 22, 2005

By 

E. Bukowsky "booklover10" (NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Prince of Fire (Hardcover)

Daniel Silva has followed up his terrific trilogy with another outstanding novel. "Prince of Fire" brings back Gabriel Allon, a gifted art restorer and master spy who has settled down in Venice with the lovely Chiara, whom he hopes to marry. After a tempestuous life filled with tragedy and violence, Allon is trying to find the peace of mind that has thus far eluded him. A huge bomb destroys the Israeli embassy in Rome and sinks any hope that Allon can live a placid life free of bloodshed.

Ari Shamron, who is now seventy-five, was once the head of Israel's secret service and Gabriel's mentor. He is now a special advisor to Israel's prime minister. Shamron visits Gabriel in Italy and informs him that Palestinian terrorists have uncovered Gabriel's true identity and may be targeting him for assassination. He urges Gabriel to come out of retirement and lead a team that will hunt down a Palestinian mastermind named Khaled al-Khalifa. This man is believed to be responsible not only for the attack in Rome, but also for two earlier blasts in Buenos Aires and Istanbul that killed over one hundred Jews.

"Prince of Fire" is intricate, fast-paced, and absorbing. Without sermonizing or pontificating, Silva explores the politics of hatred in the Middle East. He skillfully traces the trail of terror that has left this region in a constant state of fear and mourning for so many years. As we have come to expect from Silva, he writes exciting, suspenseful, and unpredictable action sequences that contain fascinating details about how spies operate.

All of Silva's characters are well drawn, but Gabriel Allon is in a class by himself. He has suffered great personal losses from which he can never completely recover. Although he has repeatedly hunted down and slaughtered the enemies of his people, Gabriel remains a compassionate man who values human life. In this book, he is confronted with a terrifying moral dilemma, and one particular scene in which he must make a split-second, life or death decision is simply electrifying. "Prince of Fire" proves, once again, that Daniel Silva has mastered the art of writing espionage thrillers with intelligence, depth, and heart.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Now THAT'S entertainment!, March 31, 2005

By 

Michael D. Trimble (Connecticut) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Prince of Fire (Hardcover)

An absolutely fabulous story and without a doubt the most enjoyable book I have read in a long time. Daniel Silva has proven once again that he is a gifted storyteller and one of the best at international espionage and intrigue.

This fascinating Silva book is another in the Gabriel Allon series. For those of you who don't know, Allon is the physically underwhelming yet world renowned art restorer, who lives a double life in the Israeli Intelligence Service. Once "activated" Allon has no peer as the secret protector of Israeli security. Allon finds the really bad guys, the ones that nobody else wants to track. Allon goes where all others fear to tread and brings the bad guys to justice, whether that means the justice of the court, the justice of some form of imprisonment, or the justice of the assassin's bullet.

In this book Allon reluctantly abandons his precious work in Vienna, at the Chapel of San Giavanni Crisostomo, where he has spent months on the restoration of a famous Bellini altarpiece. His mission is a search for the terrorist mastermind behind a recent horrific and deadly bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Rome. All indications are that there is much more death and destruction to follow, so Gabriel is in a rush to find this terrorist before he strikes again. Along the way he learns that the life of his target and his own life are inextricably interwoven. The chase, which does not disappoint, covers a lot of ground and takes the reader from Rome, to Venice, Cairo, London, Paris and Jerusalem, and along the way Silva gives a factual history lesson from 1910 to the present, on the struggles between the Palestinians and the Israelis. This history lesson alone is almost worth of the price of the book!

I have read the comparisons others have made to Silva's writing and I will add a comparison of my own. In Silva I see an early Ludlum. I certainly feel the same sort of thrill reading Silva that I did more than 25 years ago reading Ludlum. Silva's books are every bit as exciting, the plots are equal to or better than Ludlum when he was at his best. Silva has my unqualified recommendation; you simply can not go wrong reading one of his books!

36 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "He was no one, he lived nowhere...the eternal wandering Jew.", February 23, 2005

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Prince of Fire (Hardcover)

In his fourth novel-adventure, art restorer Gabriel Allon is recalled to action by the Israeli intelligence service for which he once worked. A massive truck bomb at the Israeli embassy in Rome and the shooting of fleeing victims has left fifty-two dead. When the Israelis obtain a computer disk from the terrorists' house outside of Milan, they discover recent photos of Gabriel Allon and his lover, notes about his real identity, and details of his sanctioned killing of Black September members, along with the second in command in the PLO. Yassir Arafat himself ordered reprisals against Allon, which resulted in the death of Allon's son and the maiming of his wife in a car bombing.

Believing the Rome bombing to be connected to the bombings of a Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires in 1994 and the bombing of Istanbul's main synagogue in 2003, Allon and his mentor, Ari Shamron, an advisor to the prime minister of Israel, soon focus on three generations of a single family. Sheikh Asad led the Arab Revolt in 1936, unleashing deadly attacks all over Israel, until he was assassinated on orders of Yitzhak Rabin. The Sheik's son, Sabri, a friend of Yassir Arafat, accepted his father's terrorist mantle, until he was eliminated. Sabri's orphaned son, young Khaled, adopted by Yassir Arafat, is believed to be behind the recent spate of bombings of Jewish buildings around the world. Allon is now assigned to find and execute him.

The novel, the fourth in the Allon series, is filled with familiar main characters from the past, both in Allon's personal life and in his life as part of the Israeli security service. These familiar "faces" and the numerous references to Allon's previous adventures add depth and important historical background to this novel. The past relationships of characters and their interconnections are written clearly so new readers will not become confused, as Allon and Shamron try to find Khaled and prevent another attack, this time in France.

Silva is a particularly efficient novelist, writing in an exciting narrative style which keeps the tension high while he explores contemporary issues. He is a master at juggling subplots and developing his characters, especially his flawed main character, Gabriel Allon. His inclusion of real people, such as Itzhak Rabin and Yassir Arafat, gives immediacy to the action, and his background information on the continuing war between the Arabs and Jews for the land in Palestine gives a sense of context to this long-standing enmity. Beautifully paced, the novel offers glimpses of life in contemporary Israel and the historic reasons for the violence there. Mary Whipple