The Secret Servant [Audiobook, Import] [Paperback]

Daniel Silva (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Michael Joseph; Open market e. edition (2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0718153162
• ISBN-13: 978-0718153168
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (141 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,681,162 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

81 of 81 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Londonistan", September 15, 2007

By 

Gary Griffiths (Los Altos Hills, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Secret Servant (Gabriel Allon) (Hardcover)

Daniel Silva has yet again written a novel that at the same time will entertain and scare the hell out of you; a novel as well researched and believable as LeCarre in his Cold War glory days, but moving at the pace of Follett or Forsythe at the top of their story-telling skills.

In "The Secret Servant", Gabriel Allon, the avenging angel of Israel's formidable secret service, is back to do battle again with the ever-rising tide of radical Islam terrorism. Sent to Amsterdam on a seemingly routine mission to clean up after an assassinated undercover agent, Allon unwittingly uncovers an Al Qaeda-like plot which leads him to London and Elizabeth Halton, the daughter of the US Ambassador to The United Kingdom. Unable - barely - to thwart Elizabeth's kidnapping, Allon sets out with his familiar cast of "citizens of the night" from Tel Aviv's intelligence service, taking him on what I thought his most challenging and harrowing assignment since the days of his youth when he was summoned to wreck vengeance on the Black September perpetrators of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre.

While the main course in "Secret Service" is harrowing suspense and action, told with brutal force and free-flowing blood, the venue here is the very real and very dangerous Islamification of Europe. And while Silva's popularity certainly suffers from blunt talk that may offend the more sensitive or liberal-minded readers, this is a straightforward and intelligent dissection of the threats facing the west today. But it is hardly simple, one-sided, Zionist rhetoric, for while there is no doubt on which side of the conflict Silva falls, he paints a surprisingly balanced picture of the enormity of the issue, wrapping his fiction around radical Islam's rise from the brutal poverty in ghettos in Middle east, fomenting hate fueled by the blunders of the west, and especially of the secular governments in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

In short, gripping fiction with all the right adrenalin charged superlatives. But while the ending may be predictable, and the story is one that you'll recall with each new tale of terrorism in the headlines, "The Secret Servant" falls short on redemption, knowing that while individual acts of terror may be thwarted, the larger war rages on just below the that level of collective conscience we'd prefer not to acknowledge.

28 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chilling Reading, August 10, 2007

By 

John R. Linnell (New Gloucester, ME United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Secret Servant (Gabriel Allon) (Hardcover)

I started my last review of a Silva book by noting that whatever else one says about him, he does not sugar coat his message. After finishing his seventh novel involving the Israeli art restorer, assassin and intelligence officer, Gabriel Allon, I can reliably report that nothing has changed.

In the story that unfolds is the very a very grim depiction of what is becoming the "Islamification" of Europe.

In the opening chapter an Israeli asset by the name of Solomon Rosner, a professor of scociology at the University of Amsterdam has caused a bit of a stir by writing a book entitled, "The Islamic Conquest of the West." In the book Rosner argues that Holland is currently under a sustained and systematic attack by jihadist Islam, the goal of which is to turn it into a majority Muslim state. The Dutch press looked upon the warning as "hysterical claptrap" and pronounced that what the situation needed was tolerance and dialogue. The book and the Dutch response to it made Rosner the most vilified and most celebrated man in Holland. An imam instructed his following that "Rosner the Jew must be dealt with harshly."
He was. Murdered on the street.

That murder sets in motion a series of events which involves Allon in trying to thwart the terrorists plans. The story is fast paced, intriguing, inormative and scary. Typical Silva, which means a fine read is in store for those that venture into the world according to this author, which unfortunately is a world we are all slowly coming to recognize.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not exactly a thriller, November 22, 2007

By 

Julia Flyte - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Secret Servant (Gabriel Allon) (Hardcover)

This is not a bad novel by any means, but readers expecting a fast paced and suspenseful thriller - as I was - may be left feeling disappointed.

The first half of the book was great. It felt realistic, compelling and tense. However the action ground to a halt around the midway mark. (My husband actually gave up on it at this point). It continued in fits and starts, but there's something kind of wrong when you're 70 pages from the end of a thriller and don't feel compelled to see how it's going to finish. The ending dragged on and was underwhelming.

I also felt that the book was let down by the leaden dialogue - people speaking in explanations, saying things like: "you mean the covenant that forbids you from operating on European soil without first obtaining permission from the security service of the country involved" or "Islamic extremism is just the latest virus to thrive in Europe's nurturing environment" - people don't talk like that! On the other hand, Daniel Silva is very good at conveying a sense of location and I felt he nailed the mindset of an Israeli secret service agent.

I should mention that this was the first novel by Silva that I have read. In itself that did not affect my enjoyment of this book, although there did seem to be a lot of conversations between characters referring to action that took place in previous Gabriel Allon outings and if you are new to the series, it would probably be better to start with an earlier novel.