Prince of Fire (Hardcover)

Question: In 2008, you released #1 New York Times bestseller Moscow Rules, a book everyone was talking about. Now you've written the much-anticipated sequel. Tell us a little about The Defector.

Danile Silva: The Defector is my twelfth novel and the ninth to feature my hero, the enigmatic art restorer and Israeli assassin Gabriel Allon. As you might expect, a writer forms an attachment to all his books-in a way, they're a bit like children-but I'm especially excited about The Defector because it's not only a thriller but a love story. Just to bring readers up to date, in the last installment of the series, Gabriel brought down one of the world's most dangerous men: the ruthless Russian oligarch and arms dealer Ivan Kharkov. But even the great Gabriel Allon makes mistakes once in a while, and in the case of Ivan, his mistake was leaving him alive. There's a wonderful quotation from Machiavelli that I use as the epigram for the novel: "If an injury has to be done to a man, it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared." Gabriel would have been wise to heed that advice. He didn't, of course. And in The Defector, Ivan Kharkov is out for revenge.

DS: It's true. A heart-stopping, edge-of-your-seat, and sometimes extremely violent love story, but a love story nonetheless. I feel as if I've developed a real bond with my readers, and I've learned something extremely valuable from them. While they're captivated by Gabriel's adventures, they also follow his personal trials and misfortunes very carefully-especially my female readers. Gabriel has had a complicated history with women, to say the least, but I've discovered that many of my female readers have a bit of a crush on him. Frankly, I'm a bit surprised by this. He's moody, clinically shy, and prone to periods of melancholia. But he's also a very intriguing and attractive character.

DS: It really does. As the story opens, he's returned to an isolated villa in the hills of Umbria to resume his honeymoon with Chiara and to restore a seventeenth-century altarpiece for the Vatican. But his world is once again thrown into turmoil when he learns that Grigori Bulganov, The Defector and former Russian intelligence officer who saved his life in Moscow, has vanished without a trace from a busy street in London. British intelligence is convinced Grigori was a double agent all along, but Gabriel's masters in Tel Aviv have another opinion. They suspect Bulganov has been abducted by Ivan Kharkov. And they're convinced Gabriel is next on Ivan's list. Gabriel is confronted by a stark choice. He can return to Israel and go into hiding, or he can try to keep a promise he made to Grigori the night of their dramatic escape from Russia. He chooses the second option-after all, he is Gabriel Allon-and, as you might imagine, Chiara isn't terribly pleased. Without giving away too much of the plot, the decision will prove to be the most fateful of Gabriel's long career, and his life will never be the same again.

DS:: That's true. And each of the remarkable women portrayed in the novel have a huge impact on the way the story is finally resolved. In real life I'm surrounded by strong women-anyone who's met my wife knows that-so it's only natural for me to cast women in heroic roles.

DS: In short, because London now finds itself on the front lines of this new Cold War between Russia and the West. You might find this surprising, but some two hundred thousand Russians make their home in metropolitan London these days. Those Russians include exiled billionaires and dissidents along with several hundred Russian intelligence agents. By all accounts, MI5, the British Security Service, was caught flatfooted by the recent surge of Russian espionage activity in London. And with good reason. For the past several years, the overwhelming majority of MI5's resources have been focused on the fight against Islamic terrorism. Now they've had to redirect many of those assets toward the Russians. I'm afraid they have little choice. The murder of a real-life defector and dissident named Alexander Litvinenko proved that the Kremlin is willing to use violence when it wants to make a point. Read the entire interview [PDF]

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