Daniel Silva's newest novel 'Ransom' proves to be a superb and timely spy thriller - review

Followers of superb thriller writer Daniel Silva have relished the 25 novels he has produced since 2000, featuring his Israeli spy hero, Gabriel Allon.

The series began with The Kill Artist. Allon, raised on a kibbutz by Holocaust-survivor parents, is studying art in Jerusalem. In 1972, veteran spymaster Ari Shamron recruits him to hunt down those responsible for the murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. The assignment derails his intended career as a painter.

He subsequently trains in art restoration in Venice, and over the years restoration becomes both his professional cover and a genuine vocation, pursued alongside clandestine operations for Israeli intelligence.

In 1991, a car bombing in Vienna killed his young son and left his first wife, Leah, badly wounded. Allon retreats to Cornwall to restore paintings but is repeatedly drawn back into intelligence work. 

Followers of Allon will be delighted with the 26th adventure

Lovers of page-turner novelist Silva, and followers of Allon, will be delighted with the 26th adventure, Ransom. The plot, replete with thrills, surprises, red herrings, and unexpected twists and turns, is set firmly in the contemporary world. 

References are made to US President Donald Trump’s bid to annex Greenland, and even to King Charles III’s brother Andrew, formerly the Duke of York, who was stripped of his royal titles over his association with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The war in Ukraine is dragging on and, to counter European support for the Ukrainians, Russia is engaged in covert operations against the West. Hi-tech remote-controlled drones feature strongly – even a drone as tiny as a mosquito, used to spray nerve agent in a target’s face. 

Silva’s plot is as ingenious as ever. Beautiful socialite Alice, married to multi-millionaire Edward Knight, is kidnapped, and Allon is cajoled into rescuing her. He negotiates with the kidnappers and has brought their original vast ransom demand down to an acceptable figure when Knight intervenes, Allon is hijacked and, as they say, the plot thickens.

From then on, surprises abound, and the reader is kept glued to the page. The action moves effortlessly across Europe. England, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Finland, Denmark, and the Netherlands all feature – even the Luxembourg embassy in London. International corruption is unmasked.

The highlight is an ingenious Russian drone attack on major locations in London, including the prime minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street, as he hosts a European summit.

Who is author Daniel Silva?

SILVA WAS born in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Both his parents were school teachers. When he was about seven, the family moved to California. He studied journalism at California State University and international relations at San Francisco.

This combination of journalism and international relations provided a foundation for the two principal strengths of his subsequent fiction: an interest in the practical realities of political events, and an ability to turn complicated international affairs into accessible narratives.

Silva generally keeps his private life separate from his public literary identity, but he has disclosed that he is married to Jamie Gangel, an American television journalist who has worked for CNN and NBC News, and that they have twins – a girl and a boy.

By a strange coincidence, his Israeli hero, Allon, and his new wife Chiara also have a girl and a boy. Allon joins his family in Venice following a nail-biting climax played out on the cliff-tops in the farthest reaches of Cornwall, very close to Land’s End.

Silva provides an Author’s Note to round off the novel. In it, he lets his readers into the secret of what is true and what is invented in the book.

The political circumstances in which the novel is placed are real, and Silva concludes with his own thoughts about this world and suggests one way, perhaps, of redeeming it.

In chapter 37 of Ransom, he writes, “I describe the French president, the German chancellor, and the prime ministers of Denmark and the United Kingdom as the leaders ‘of what was once fondly known as the free world.’

“It is fair to ask, though, whether ‘the free world,’ or even ‘the West,’ still exists. The collapse of the postwar liberal order was brought about by too many factors to list in this small space, but one element cannot be denied.

“For more than two decades a vengeful and revanchist Vladimir Putin, with the help of his intelligence services, has worked tirelessly to destroy the old order and replace it with one led by Moscow.

“Perhaps it is time, as my fictitious British spymaster Graham Seymour suggests, to take the gloves off and launch a hybrid war against Russia – with stealth and low cunning and, yes, a touch of wickedness. Turnabout, as the old saying goes, is fair play.”

A clue, perhaps, as to Allon’s 27th exploit?■

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RANSOM 
(GABRIEL ALLON BOOK #26)
By Daniel Silva
Harper
414 pages; $15