The Kill Artist (Hardcover)

by Daniel Silva (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Fans of Daniel Silva's well-received earlier novels, especially The Marching Season, will welcome his newest novel of espionage, revenge, and Middle Eastern politics. Gabriel Allon is an art restorer who's persuaded out of retirement by Ari Shamron, the crafty Israeli spymaster bent on a deadly mission: killing a Palestinian agent named Tariq before he can carry out his plan to assassinate an old comrade-in-arms, the treacherous peacemaker Yasir Arafat.

Tariq's role in the murder of Gabriel's wife and son draws both Gabriel and Sarah Halevy, the beautiful French model whose affair with Gabriel led to the assassination of his family. Still in love with Gabriel, Sarah allows herself to be set up with a cover and infiltrated into Tariq's inner circle. But before Gabriel can rescue her and fulfill his mission, Tariq turns the tables to get his old adversary as well as Arafat in his own sights. A particularly resonant scene in which Tariq and Arafat confront each other and discuss their former friendship, as well as the change in tactics that has brought Tariq to the ultimate betrayal, reveals Silva's deep comprehension of Palestinian rivalries. He puts a clever little fillip on the ending that adds to the brio of this strongly paced thriller. Silva creates complex, fascinating characters in Gabe, Ari, and Tariq, and more than fulfills the promise of his earlier books. --Jane Adams

From Publishers Weekly
The tragedy of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and despair of its resolution provide the backdrop for Silva's (The Unlikely Spy) heart-stopping, complex yarn of international terrorism and intrigue. Israeli master spy Ari Shamron sets an intricate plot in motion to lure deadly Palestinian assassin Tariq al-Hourani into his net. Art restorer Gabriel Allon, a former Israeli agent whose family was killed by Tariq, is lured back into the fray by Shamron and teamed with Jacqueline Delacroix, a French supermodel/Israeli secret agent whose grandparents died in the Holocaust. Gabriel sets up in London to monitor Yusef, Tariq's fellow terrorist and confidant. Jacqueline is assigned to seduce him in hopes of intercepting Tariq, who is devising a plan to kill Israel's prime minister during peace talks with Arafat in New YorkDand he has similar plans for Gabriel. The tortuous plot leading the various parties to the showdown in Manhattan is a thrilling roller-coaster ride, keeping readers guessing until the mind-bending conclusion. Sensitive to both sides of the conflict, the narrative manages to walk a political tightrope while examining the motivations of Palestinians and Israelis alike. The duplicity and secret financial juggling to keep government hands clean is personified in publishing mogul Benjamin Stone, who backs the Israeli efforts. He is just one of many larger-than-life characters (both real and invented) thrown into the mixDArafat himself has a tense encounter with Tariq that underscores the volatility of terrorist loyalty. An array of global locales adds to the complexity and authenticity of the dizzying, cinematic plot. (Dec.) Forecast: The popular success of Silva's first two novels and the timeliness of this one suggest escalating sales. Random is backing the title with major ad/promo, including a six-city author tour.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (December 19, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375500901
• ISBN-13: 978-0375500909
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 7 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (95 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #65,123 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

• This is item 1 in The Gabriel Allon Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Silva proves he is still a pro..., May 28, 2001

By	Cris Cunningham "loves to read" (Long island, NY) - See all my reviews

Gabriel Allon is "the Kill Artist"; a former assassin who worked clandestinely for the Israeli government. When we first meet him he is living in a remote English seaside village and working as an art restorer, a cover he used frequently during his covert operations. He is soon called out of retirement by his former boss, Ari Shamron, head of Israeli intelligence, and a calculating man with his own agenda...one that may cost Gabriel his life. Ari needs Gabriel's talents to track down Tariq, an Palestinian assassin whose killing rampage is threatening the Middle East peace negotiations. Tariq and Gabriel have met before when Gabriel killed Tariq's brother in a very brutal manner, and Tariq avenged that death with a killing of his own...Gabriel's wife and son, making this a story of international intrigue and personal revenge. The stage is now set for a major showdown, but they must first cover three continents and weave through an array of cultures and characters to find each other. Gabriel is assisted by his former intelligence co-worker, a beautiful French girl named Jacqueline, whose family was killed in the Holocaust. Jacqueline is hesitant to join Gabriel on this assignment, but in the end it is love that prevails, and she plunges head first into Tariq's lair, a deadly trap that Gabriel may not be able to get her out of in time to save her life.

What I love about Daniel Silva is his smooth and uncomplicated style. He has a "rhythm" to his writing that hooks you somewhere in the beginning and stays with you long after you finish the book. It took me a little longer to warm up to these characters, probably because there isn't a lot happening in the way of relationships as there is in his other book _The Mark Of The Assassin_. Everyone is hiding behind their own specific job and agenda. They're all business. Still, the plot is riveting and the pace is solid.

4 and 1/2 stars. Highly recommended. His protagonist doesn't quite involve the readers as in his past works but this is definitely worth a buy.

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Plot Artist, July 6, 2006

By	T. K. Kenyon "Author of CALLOUS and RABID" (www.tkkenyon.com) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Kill Artist (Paperback)

This book is chronologically the first in the Gabriel Allon series.

Chronological Order:
1. The Kill Artist
2. The English Assassin
3. The Confessor
4. Death in Venice
5. Prince of Fire
6. The Messenger

In this book, Gabriel, a former assassin for Israel's foreign intelligence service, the Mossad (which translates into English as "The Institution") retired after the murders of his wife and son to lead a quiet life as an art restorer, one who fixes the wounded past. Gabriel's ex-boss, Ari Shamron, an Israeli spymaster a la George Smiley but more treacherous, convinces Gabriel to leave his sheltered hermitage to hunt down Tariq, the assassin who killed Gabriel's family, before he can kill again. In an exquisitely wrought plot of treachery and counter-treachery, Silva explores the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from many, many angles.

I don't read spy fiction as a genre. I don't read anything as a genre. I read great writers, pretty much no matter what they write. I've read a lot of John Le Carre, and one of the few criticisms that I have of his work is that his spies play a gentleman's game. However, Le Carre's spies are deeply human and British.

Silva's spies are not gentlemen, and this is no gentlemen's game. This is hard and dirty intelligence work by one of the hardest and dirtiest intelligence services on the planet. The Mossad is charged with keeping tiny Israel's formidable opponents at bay, and you don't do that by playing fair. Gabriel's Mossad plays entirely unfairly, as it must, as it does in real life. In this book, Jacqueline/Sarah is used as a "honey trap," and Silva lightly explores what it does to a woman to prostitute oneself for a good cause. Silva does exaggerate some of the Mossad's successes, which he does not need to do because the Mossad is very successful without Silva's burnishing.

Silva's plotting is as intricate as a chess game, albeit a game where each of the chess pieces has a deeply felt personality, background, and damaged psyche such that they refuse to move where the gamester wants them to and take on a life of their own. Another thing that I like about Silva's work is that, while Gabriel is the central character and our guide, each of Silva's characters has his/her own agenda and life and is capable of growing, changing direction, and surprising the reader. One feels when reading Silva's books that the book is built to elucidate several characters, not merely one central character.

TK Kenyon
Author of Rabid: A Novel and Callous: A Novel

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars As Complex and Compelling as the Real-life Drama, February 14, 2001

By	Newt Gingrich (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews ("THE")

Reading this the week Sharon defeated Barak (and Arafat survived to negotiate with his fifth Israeli Prime Minister since the Oslo Accords), I concluded that this novel is a useful reminder of how fiction often describes truths more vividly than non-fiction.

Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are excruciatingly painful and difficult because both sides have a legitimate sense of paranoia, and both sides have a legitimate sense of historic tragedy and grievance. The Kill Artist is told from the Israeli point of view but with a healthy dose of Palestinian interpretations of the last half-century. It is the story of an Israeli assassin who is lured out of retirement to kill a Palestinian who's own murders are legendary. The setting for this conflict pits two forms of organized state sponsored violence against one another.

The sense of mutual grievance and mutual willingness to kill for political and historic reasons is conveyed vividly. In one passage, we gain insight into the motivation of the Palestinian character: "It came from growing up in the camps of Sidon. His father had died when Tariq was young, and his older brother Mahmoud, was murdered by the Jews...He would think of his father--how he had died of a broken heart with the keys to the family home in the Upper Galilee still in his pocket."(Page 43)

On the other side is the head of Israeli intelligence, a man in the Sharon tradition: "I believe we will be no more secure after a peace deal than before it. ... I believe the fire in the Palestinian heart will never be extinguished until the Jews are driven into the sea. And I'll tell you one other thing ... I would much rather do battle with a sworn enemy than with an enemy who finds expediency in posing as a friend."(Page 75)

The long-term challenge of peace in the region is vividly illustrated again by the intelligence chief: "Everyone thinks now that peace is at hand there are no more threats to our survival. They don't understand that peace will only make the fanatics more desperate. They don't understand that we will need to spy on our new Arab friends just as hard as when they were openly committed to our destruction. A spy's work is never done."(Page 76-77)

Silva deserves real credit for writing these prescient words and creating these characters when the Barak peace Prime Ministership was at its most optimistic and there was no sign on the horizon of the Camp David tragic overreach and the new wave of violence.

This novel is complex, compelling, and kept me enthralled to the point that I could not put the book down until had I finished it. As fiction that gives a vivid description of just how hard the future will be in the real world, this is a very worthwhile read.

Sharon is 72, Peres is 77, and Arafat is 71. Whether they can truly find a road to peace or are trapped in the bitterness, fear and violence described in this novel will be a major issue in the next decade. This novel does not offer encouragement that the region can get much beyond non-violence in a state of truce for at least a generation, and instead leaves you with the impression that true peace may be the work of our grandchildren.