The Defector (Gabriel Allon) Paperback – July 6, 2010

Following the characters was occasionally challenging, but otherwise, well written and suitability suspenseful. Highly recommended. No more words to better describe.

That's Chiara, Gabriel's wife, speaking on Page 470. "The Defector" a very good story, with lots of tension, and - happily -- with a minimum number of characters and sub-plots. Silva seems to write Russian women better than he does Russian men, but he has yet to give Gabriel's new wife Chiara a credible personality, such a pity.This story is light years better than "Moscow Rules," the previous story on which this one depends.Increasingly, an inordinate amount of words are devoted to bringing the reader up-to-date on the background of the 8 or 9 previous novels featuring Gabriel Allon, Israeli uber-assassin. It's sort of necessary for context, but the summaries, book-by-further-book, become cookie-cutter.There are 2 plot "errors" in this otherwise quite superb and very well-written high-tension, high action story.1. The abduction of the female Israeli secret service agent, resulting from an uncharacteristic lapse in Israeli security, wouldn't have happened even in fiction the way it did. A poorly executed plot feature, though essential for the bigger storyline. It simply wasn't a very creative plot feature.2. The long drawn-out (and so pitifully predicable) conversation at the remote Russian dacha with the bad guy, Ivan, who uncharacteristically allows the "literary distraction," thus giving the good guys time to come to the rescue. I'm so over these "troops-riding-in-at-the-last-minute" shticks! Surely, Silva is more creative than this. He got the players into the jam with abandon; let's see him get them out without phoniness!Silva's apology at the end of the story, reminding us that the book is entertainment and fiction, falls on deaf ears. His politics, world view and sympathies show on every page. The interpretation of actual history reviewed ad nauseam here and in other books are flawed and totally skewed - necessary, I suppose, for the fictional characters to have motivation and purpose. As a result of the historical context and Gabriel's increasingly big history as an assassin, every episode and every story is built upon "personal" revenge and motivation. Rarely is there anything more philosophically over-arching or to give these characters raison de entre. Silva has in a sense invented a new genre: Revenge Thrillers.Suggestion: let's retire Shamron. He is no longer useful to any Allon series stories. He's deadweight. Maybe in the next one, there could be a nice funeral for the old man?Oh yes, one minor point. The scene in Upstate New York, where we see Elena's two children trying to build a snowman in sub-zero snowy cold, can't be done. No one can make a snowman in such temperatures. It's a small mistake, but a little embarrassing.For all my criticism, technically I thought this book was quite excellent. Many times throughout the story, it becomes a genuine page-turner, first class. The writing is excellent. The only problems (as is usual with books like these) are flaws in the plot structure - the concocted "rescues" that stretch even fictional believability.It's a very solid 4 on the Amazon scale.

When I opened the Defector page on Amazon to write a review, I was shocked at seeing some reviews lower than four stars. I totally loved this book. First of all, it continued a story from his previous book, that was begging for a continuation. Secondly, Mr. Silva knows how to grab a reader and not let go. I could not put this book down. I read in my husband's face all weekend, thank goodness golf was on, it helped with the guilt a little.After so many books with Gabriel, you would think the stories and characters would get old, and not interesting. This book proves the exact opposite. I really just could not stop reading, I had to know what was going to happen. One of the other reviewers said they did not like it, it was obvious how it was going to end. Maybe, but isn't that the fun of a good book, it is the journey you take with the characters and the author that makes the book worth reading?Read this book, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Daniel Silva’s series with Gabriel Allon is nail biting. I highly recommend for anyone who enjoys political history, espionage, and amazing descriptions of the ever changing scenery. The amount of research that goes into the creation of this series is absolutely astounding. Can’t wait to read book 10!

Once again, Daniel Silva, in baseball parlance, has hit it out of the park. His fast-paced prose kept this reader glued to my reader. In my opinion, he is the high priest of this style of fiction.Kudos, Mr. Silva.Christopher Butler

When readers last encountered Gabriel Allon, Israeli spy and master art restorer, he was escorting the wife of an oligarch, Ivan Kharkhov, out of Russia, along with a journalist and FSB (KGB successor) agent. All four were fleeing Russia to save their lives, but as the events of this sequel show, it's hard to escape the long reach of the modern-day Kremlin or the fury of an outraged oligarch.When this novel opens, Israeli master spy and assassin is back in Italy, restoring a Guido Reni altarpiece and debating the issue of having children with his wife, Chiara. Then Grigori Bulganov, the former FSB agent, vanishes off a street in London. Has he re-defected, returning home to Russia with insight into the way the British and Americans operate and dangerous knowledge about Allon? Or has he been snatched, in revenge for his betrayal? Allon needs to find out, even if it means flying in the face of direct orders from Shamron, his longtime boss, mentor and the head of "The Office". Not only is Allon's security at stake, but he made a promise to Grigori as they were driving to safety. "Promise me one thing, Gabriel," Grigori had said to him. "Promise me I won't end up in an unmarked grave" -- the traditional Russian punishment for betrayal. Nor is keeping that promise Allon's only motivation.That promise and Allon's investigation are just the beginning of a dramatic series of events, as Gabriel must race to save the lives of those he cares for and deliver some measure of final justice to Kharkhov. It's not, properly speaking, a spy novel, but more of a suspense thriller in which the main protagonists happen to be spies or other forms of agents. The missions that Gabriel and his team tackle are deeply personal ones, culminating in a deeply personal act of vengeance at the book's close.As with all Silva's books, the writing is careful and often eloquent. Still, anyone who has followed Gabriel and his team and occasional allies through all nine books in this series won't find many surprises outside the twists and turns of this particular plot. Gabriel is still torn between his desire for a peaceful life and his art and a deeper compulsion to do what only he (apparently) can do for his country; Shamron is still an elderly, tyrannical and rather ruthless 'retired' spy, etc. That's perhaps the single greatest flaw in this series -- while the characters' lives change (such as Gabriel meeting, falling in love with and marrying Chiara), the characters never really develop or change in significant ways. Thinking about this book after finishing it -- it's too good to stop and think while reading -- I realized that many of the passages about the thoughts of the main characters, removed from their context, could fit neatly back in to nearly any book in the series. It may sound like a quibble, but to me that means that while Silva is still able to craft a great thriller around one of the classic themes -- revenge -- his characters are getting a bit long in the tooth. Given the strength of some of his early, pre-Allon books (The Marching Season and The Unlikely Spy), I'd love to see this very good author turn his talents to some fresher material, before the plots also begin to feel repetitive. It's a tribute to Silva that this book -- which when I stepped back to think of it, was really just round two of Moscow Rules (Gabriel Allon) -- was such a pleasure to read.Highly recommended to the author's fans; thriller readers will also enjoy it, although I'd suggest reading Moscow Rules before this one. (It's possible to read on a stand-alone basis, but you won't get the full background and context.) Die-hard spy novel afficionados may find that they prefer some of Silva's earlier books, which involve intelligence work as well as the tradecraft showcased in this one, or else read the works of Alan Furst or Olen Steinhauer. It seems to be open season on the part of suspense/spy novel writers on Putin's Russia; another new thriller I've just read and reviewed takes aim at some of the same themes (corruption and the oligarchs), albeit in a more oblique and less suspenseful manner -- Alex Dryden's Red to Black.