1st in series about Gabriel Allon, a ?retired Israeli spy, who gets back in the game.
Silva does a nice job a exploring the world of the Middle East and the terrorist and counter-terrorist groups. He even throws in some history between Palestine and Israel's struggle in this work. However, the plot isn't really anything new, the characters are heavy, dark and tortured. No happy people here- I think they would have been killed off in the very first of the book. I wouldn't mind a little humorous side kick. ( )

I read this book for RL book group. It is for my mystery group and it is more thriller than mystery. It is took me a while, mostly because I wanted it to be over, and found it hard to pick up and easy to put down. The writing was good but that didn't help, it was the content that was the problem for me.

I used to like this type of book when I was younger, but now it seems slick, superficial, smarmy and manipulative. I don't know if I have changed and matured, if after 9/11 I am less interested in the casual murder of others, or if this book is just not done well.

Its very simplistic, the good guy can kill people and be called an assassin, because he is killing the bad guy. The bad guy kills people and is called a terrorist. Yet both are committing murder.

The characters are Israelis and Palestinians, very predictably portrayed.

The thing is both are human, both have family and friends who will be the ones to suffer the lingering damage of murder and it will cause another round of killing/dying/suffering.

The murders are payback for previous wrongs and will most assuredly generate new murders.

I suppose I can't fault the writer for not having a better solution or story, since we are struggling with the same issues in real life, but the author adds nothing new to the mix. It feels ghoulish and sad to watch these doomed people for entertainment purposes.

The story follows Gabriel Allon who is a retired Israeli assassin. In retirement he uses his skill in art to become an art restorer. He of course is very good at it, so he lives a comfortable life, on the outside. On the inside he is troubled by his past actions, kindled by the memory of his wife and son being blown up in a car bomb.

This was were I felt manipulated by the author. I thought Silva used the love of a family to make Allon seem less like a killer and more like a normal person. He is supposed to be seen as morally superior to his boss, the hard, scheming man who plans killings. Please. Then the bomb incident was two-fold, it made it seem like he had paid for his past evil, that he suffered and didn't get off free and of course it meant he could have sexy encounters with beautiful agents all while conforming to modern morality. I wanted to throw the book against a wall.

The story is of the bad guy, Tariq a Palestinian assassin, killing high profile Jewish targets around the world. Allon's boss was also retired, but has been asked back because the current regime was bungling publicly. He of course talks Allon into returning. Allon will come back to hunt Tariq, because he is the one who blew up the car with Allon's wife and child in it.

So this is not just protecting the innocent, avenging the wrongs done to the country of Israel and the Jewish people/religion/culture, but a personal vendetta. Hooks to catch the sympathy of many readers. I just felt the killings were there to provide justification for more killings.

The bad guy Tariq kills an American too at the start. He uses unsuspecting women as cover, and then kills them. Since only American lives seem to be of value, that had to happen to make Tariq a bad guy we will really hate. To be fair, Silva gives Tariq a childhood of suffering extreme violence and the loss of family at the hands of the Israeli's in the refugee camps in Lebanon. Silva can say he is not one-sided, but presents both sides in a bad light. It means Tariq is also working for vengeance, and feels justified in his actions.

The whole thing has the feeling of the calculus of hate and violence balanced so finely to make everything seem justified and inevitable. I just felt sad and dirty reading the book.

The writing is very good, if shallow and slick. There are lots of summaries so that the information is packed in, but can be read quickly. Allon works with a beautiful high fashion model who is also an operative, and has romantic feelings for him. The guilt he feels about his family, prevents him from accepting her. Ho - Hum. The only interesting character to me, is Peel, a young English child who is an observer of Allon the art restorer.

There is a small amount about art restoration, but not much, it is flimsy window dressing.

The ending at least is not so pat. There is a twist with the final victim, and with the terrorist. Allon and the girl are still circling.

I don't know if the subject - violence in the Middle East was also what put me off. What happens there, impacts the US, even if we are not involved. The thrillers I liked in my younger days, were about Japan and ninjas, subjects that really didn't involve the US. I am too young to view them as the menace of WWII, and I read the books before their brief economic menace. I haven't re-read them as an older adult, so I don't know if they would still interest me, or if I would find them sad, contrived and dirty now too.

I don't plan to read anymore of this author or this series. ( )

Fast moving, typical spy thriller. First of the Gabriel Allon series. ( )

I liked this book, it was a good introduction to Gabriel Allon and Ari. It's interesting to see Ari's worries about why people are hesitant to return and what makes him tick. Gabriel as well, although I knew some of this from reading books further in the series. As always, a good Silva read. ( )

This is not a full review. At least, not yet. I write now only to draw attention to what must be Mr. Silva's homage to John Le Carre. In both "The Kill Artist" and Le Carre's "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," an important character is a mysterious newcomer -- a man who arrives at an out-of-the-way place in England apparently intent on keeping a low profile. In "The Kill Artist," the character is the spy Gabriel Allon. In "Tinker, Tailor," it is the spy Jim Prideaux. Each man is haunted in a way by his professional past. And each becomes the project of a boy with problems who has developed the skills of a "watcher." Mr. Le Carre's watcher, famously, is Roach, one of the boys at the school where Prideaux is filling in as a teacher. Mr. Silva's is Peel, who lives with his mother and her beastly lover near the house Allon has taken in Cornwall. Prideaux and Allon notice and appreciate the nascent espionage skills of the boys. Later in each book, another mysterious person -- an older man -- fatefully visits the stranger. In "The Kill Artist," it is the legendary spy master Ari Shamron, and of course in "Tinker, Tailor," it is the rumpled, brilliant, legendary spy master George Smiley. ( )