Review of "An Inside Job: A Gabriel Allon Thriller" by Daniel Silva

In this 25th book in the 'Gabriel Allon' series, Gabriel goes after a consortium of murderers and thieves. The book can be read as a standalone, but familiarity with the characters is a bonus

*****

Gabriel Allon is an art restorer, who - for many years - was an Israeli assassin and espionage agent, and then head of Israel's intelligence agency, called 'The Office.'



Gabriel now lives in Venice, Italy with his wife Chiara and their nine-year-old twins Raphael and Irene.





Currently, Gabriel is restoring Titian's 'The Descent of the Holy Spirit' in the church of Santa Maria della Salute.



Gabriel is taking a break from the restoration one afternoon when he spots the body of a young woman floating in the Venetian Lagoon. The carabinieri transport the body to the morgue, and the coroner determines the woman was deliberately drowned, but he has no way to identify her.

As it happens, Gabriel recognizes the homicide victim as a woman he'd seen in a Venice café, with a small suitcase, apparently waiting for someone.



Without informing the carabinieri, Gabriel makes inquiries about the dead woman. He learns she's 27-year-old Penelope Radcliff, a graduate of the Courtauld Institute of Art, working as an apprentice conservator at the Vatican Museum.



Penelope came to Venice to meet journalist Amelia March from ARTnews about "a startling artistic discovery", but Amelia's flight was delayed and Penelope was murdered.



Gabriel is a close friend of Luigi Donati, who recently became Pope Paul VII, so Gabriel goes to the Vatican to make inquiries. At the Vatican, chief conservator Antonio Calvesi says Penelope Radcliff was working on a minor work in the storeroom, 'A Madonna and Child with John the Baptist'.



Gabriel learns Penelope started cleaning the 'minor work' and discovered a painting by Leonardo Da Vinci underneath. Since then, X-rays showed the Da Vinci picture to be a beautiful girl looking over her shoulder at the viewer. The artwork is now missing, stolen from the Vatican, and Penelope is dead.....murdered before she could inform the media.



The Vatican has state-of-the-art security, so Gabriel knows the theft was an inside job. Moreover, a cadre of conspirators facilitated the theft, some of whom are also at the center of a huge Vatican real estate scandal.

Gabriel gathers members of his old espionage squad, and the chase is on. Gabriel's team is determined to retrieve the artwork, return it to the Vatican, and get justice for Penelope. Of course, the globe-trotting operation is dangerous and deadly, with bodies left in its wake - like Gabriel's missions when he was an assassin and spy.



Author Daniel Silva sprinkles the narrative with segments about art history, which I enjoyed. I also like the fictional pontiff, Paul VII, a humble man who wants to reform the corruption and greed that's rampant among some power-hungry cardinals in the Vatican (good luck with that).



Pope Paul VII also occasionally dons casual clothes and sneaks out to a little Italian restaurant to have trippa alla romana...though Gabriel warns his friend Luigi against going 'incognito' for security reasons.




Trippa alla Romana

I always like to see what people eat in novels, and this book features a number of dishes, including seafood risotto; fried roman artichokes and zucchini flowers; mushroom omelet and green salad; beef bourguignon; roasted salmon with savory lemon cream sauce; and more.


Seafood Risotto


Fried Roman Artichokes and Zuccini Flowers


Mushroom Omelet and Green Salad


Beef Bourguignon


Roasted Salmon with Savory Lemon Cream Sauce

The book is engaging, but lacks the high stakes of previous books, where Gabriel's team was chasing fascists; terrorists; Neo-Nazis....that kind of thing. Still, Silva always pens a good thriller. Recommended to fans of the genre.

Rating: 3.5 stars 

Review of "Wolf Hour: A Suspense Novel" by Jo Nesbø

Norwegian author Jo Nesbø - who's probably best known for his Harry Hole crime novels - sets this standalone novel in Minnesota. Minnesota has the largest concentration of Norwegian descendants outside Norway, and the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul) are the unofficial capital of Norwegian America.


Norwegians celebrating in Minneapolis

*****

The story opens in 2022, when a Norwegian writer named Holger Rudi arrives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Rudi plans to research a true crime book about a policeman with Norwegian heritage who pursued a serial killer in 2016. Rudi hires a cab driver to take him around the city, so he can visit the relevant sites.



From here, the novel concentrates on the events of 2016. Most of the story is told from the perspective of the authorities, interspersed with brief segments from the killer's point of view.

The serial killer's first victim is Marco Dante, purveyor of illegal weapons, mostly to customers with criminal records: "People who were willing to pay that little bit extra...in the certain knowledge that if they lost the weapon at a crime scene there was no way the police were going to be able to trace the gun back to them."



The killer perches at the sixth-floor window of an apartment in Minneapolis's Jordan Project, waiting for Dante to leave an adjacent building. When Dante appears, the shooter focuses his rifle's crosshairs on Dante's chest, pulls the trigger, and leaves.



At that moment, Minneapolis homicide detective Bob Oz (whose surname was Aass in Norwegian) is in a bar, trying to pick up a woman. Oz, nicknamed 'One-Night-Bob', has slept with scads of women since he split with his wife Alice - a separation he can't get over.



Bob is flirting with the daytime bartender when he gets a call from police headquarters about Dante's shooting. Bob hurries to the crime scene, and discovers Dante is badly injured, but not dead. This makes the shooting the responsibility of the Assault Unit, but Bob decides to investigate anyway.

From the angle of the shot, Bob finds the shooter's sixth-floor-apartment....



.....and an insulin prescription and syringe show the resident is Tomás Gomez. Gomez was once affiliated with a notorious gang called X-11, but seems to have severed his connection with them.



Bob's detective partner Kay Myers, and his boss Superintendent Brenton Walker, tell Bob to leave the assault case alone, but Bob keeps investigating secretly.



A business card in Gomez's apartment leads Bob to taxidermist Mike Lunde, who was commissioned to 'preserve' Gomez's deceased cat. Bob is convinced Gomez will return for his beloved pet, and makes frequent visits to the taxidermy shop.



Meanwhile, the shooter kills additional victims, all of them with some connection to the NRA, the gun lobby, etc. In other words, people who are pro-gun.



The killings put the case back with the homicide unit, and Bob officially investigates until he's suspended for beating up a civilian.....after which Bob continues to investigate anyway. Bob and his partner Kay are determined to bring Gomez to justice.....



......but the wily killer seems to elude them at every step, hiding in restrooms, crawling through air ducts, jumping from windows, and so on.



In large part, the novel is a character study. Bob lost a loved one in tragic circumstances; has an anger management problem; is lonely; and stalks his ex-wife Alice. Bob's troubles lead him to have some empathy for the killer, who - Bob learns - lost his family to gangbangers shooting up a McDonalds.

Other characters add interest to the story, especially Bob's fellow homicide detectives, Olav Hanson and Joe Kjos. Hanson and Kjos make fun of Bob; call him Aaa-ss; and nickname him Kentucky Fried, because (in their view) Bob is 'a chicken' in dangerous situations.



As in any good suspense novel, there are clever twists and surprises, which lead to a shocking climax.

Though author Jo Nesbø isn't American, he appears to have strong negative feelings about the gun culture of the United States. With easy access to guns, there are too many incidents of gang fights killing innocent bystanders; school shootings; murder in workplaces and houses of worship; stand your ground killings; children tragically playing with guns; and on and on.



I'm a big fan of Nesbø's Harry Hole books, as wells as his standalone thrillers and his adaptation of Macbeth. I like this book as well, but felt the climax wasn't quite satisfying. Still, I'd recommend the novel to fans of suspense thrillers, especially Jo Nesbø fans.



Thanks to Netgalley, Jo Nesbo, and Knopf for an ARC of the book.

Rating: 3.5 stars