A Death in Vienna

Setting aside the suspension-of-disbelief conventions of the spy genre, Silva's books about the assassin-cum-art-restorer are among the best of the breed. This volume brings Allon back to Vienna, where his family was destroyed in an earlier book, with ensuing complications, in order to solve a mystery surrounding his own mother and a hitherto-unknown SS monster. As always, Silva explores the rotten under-layer of US and Vatican complicity in the Nazi atrocities (pre and post war), but is not uncritical of Jewish and Israeli actions as well. Even when you know The Office is in control, though, you can't be sure which setbacks are contrived for a purpose, and which ones are real.

The rationale for the entire series is to disclose the show more horrors of the Holocaust to a new generation, in an era where forgetfulness, as well as out-right denial, are rampant.

Addendum: I really should read these in the correct order for series continuity (so far have read #10, 8, and now 4), but Silva covers the back-story naturally and fully enough for the drop-in reader.

NOTES: The Code of the Spooks is something like the Code of the West in Louis L'Amour books: a set of principles that sometimes has to be explicated for the reader. And sparks disagreement between the principals.
P. 252: "Sometimes, intelligence services must utilize the services of evil men to achieve results that are good.." vs. "There's a difference between using evil individuals as sources and hiring them as intelligence officers."
p. 300: Why pursuing the elderly Nazis and putting them on trial differs from assassinating the Black September killers of Israeli Olympic team members. "I don't just want to kill him. I want the world to know what this man did." vs. "So they could spout their propaganda from an Israeli court?...They already did that...right here in this city, in front of all the world's cameras. It wasn't our job to give them another opportunity to justify the massacre of innocents."
(pointing out that The Office is confident it always gets the right perpetrator, which is necessary to the genre -- but raises real-world questions).
p. 355: "As for the truth (about the Final Solution), no one cared while this place was in operation, and no one will care now." On a page I can't find now (twice, IIRC), the old Nazi expresses his amazement that the Reich's commanders ordered him to destroy evidence of the mass murders by incinerating the bodies, and yet live prisoners walk out of one of the camps to escape the oncoming Allies, "because they still needed their (totally useless) labor." show less

This is the fourth in the series about Gabriel Allon, former Mossad operative and current art restorer. I liked this one by far the best because it contained more history and less Israeli Bond girls caricatures.

When a friend is severely injured in a bomb blast, Gabriel defies authorities and returns to Vienna, a city that haunts his past. An informant points him toward Herr Vogel, an Austrian businessman who may have been a Nazi war criminal. As Gabriel gets closer to the truth, he also learns more about events in his mother's life during the Holocaust. Is hunting down former Nazis still relevant today? What does justice look like for these elderly war criminals?

This book references heavily Aktion 1005, the Nazis' attempt to destroy the show more millions of bodies that would serve as evidence of their crimes. Although I had read about this in books on Treblinka and Sobibor, I hadn't realized that it began in the Ukraine. It also touches on Bishop Alois Hudal's Ratlines for helping Nazis escape after the war, and Reinhard Gehlen, who went from being an intelligence agent for the Nazis to running intelligence operations for the American CIA and West Germany against the Russians. Lots of controversial topics that are not well-known provide the backdrop to the action. I had nearly given up on this series, but this book has definitely hooked me again. show less

I read this book on vacation in Vienna, thinking it would be a good mystery set in the city I was discovering. It turned out to be a much more serious and darker book than I anticipated, but excellent. I had just come from Berlin, where my husband and I spent hours in the German Historical Museum learning about Germany's troubled past (by the way, every country has a troubled past - I'm not just citing Germany here). We spent some time learning about the events leading up to WWII and Germany's anti-Semitic leanings, and so reading this book shortly afterwards was pretty interesting. I'm glad the book was set in Vienna, as opposed to a city in Gemany, so I could understand the breadth of the Nazi movement. I also did not know much about show more what happened to all of the European war criminals other than the Nuremburg Trials, so this rounded out my knowledge. Silva does a nice job educating, while at the same time providing a thrilling reading experience. Even though I was looking for something lighter, I am glad this was the book I chose to read while in Vienna. show less

A thriller featuring Gabriel Allon, an art restorer/Mossad agent, who is on the hunt for a Nazi war criminal whose unacknowledged son is set to become the next Chancellor of Austria. Allon's mother was a Holocaust survivor, and an artist, whose paintings sometimes featured a man Allon recognizes as the target of his search. Well plotted, fast paced, loaded with details of the horrors of Hitler's "Final Solution" and with condemnation of both the Vatican and the Austrian government for their roles in enabling or actively assisting the Reich and its dementors both during and after the war. I don't read this genre as a general rule, and this won't encourage me to read more of it, but I understand perfectly why this series would be gobbled show more up by those who do. It was very well done, with only a few bits that stretched my credulity. Most likely if I were a fan of the spy novel, those bits wouldn't have bothered me at all.
Reviewed in 2016 show less

This one gets real personal for Gabriel Allon, and his quest for justice concerning an SS officer from the Holocaust makes for an outstanding, fast-paced, well-constructed novel. Silva has created a very strong, very interesting character in Allon. I will quickly be moving to the next in this series....

This was my first Gabriel Allon novel and I was immediately entranced by the characters and the story. There is so much about the Holocaust that I don’t know and this book does a great job of giving you enough information wrapped up in a story of intrigue, murder and conspiracy. I admit that after reading this I did some research on the Holocaust and Israel.

I don’t read a lot of “spy” novels and was worried that this one wouldn’t be for me either but I was completely wrong. I loved this book. Daniel Silva’s ability to grab me from the get-go is one of the reasons that this is now one of my favorite books. I just could not let these characters go until I got to the end.

Gabriel Allon is not quite a reluctant assassin but show more more of a tired one who cannot turn his back on duty and country. His past is as dark as his career but he has a lot of support in his world that the author uses to give Gabriel balance. The bad guy Ludwig Vogel is a true mastermind who owns arrogance and belief his followers will protect are his downfall. But before his downfall, is a tale that weaves the past and the present together without sacrificing the suspense.

Tony Goldwyn did a great job of narrating this book and his accents felt realistic for all the characters. show less

This was my first Daniel Silva mystery, but will not be my last! This is the 4th in the Gabriel Allon mystery series, starring Allon, an Israeli intelligence agent. In this mystery, Allon is tracking down a Nazi war criminal who was responsible for hiding the murder of thousands of Jews at Treblinka. The flashbacks to the Holocaust were vividly described and brutal. What I enjoyed about this book is how it really made me reconsider some of my thoughts about the effort placed in bringing Nazi war criminals to justice. When you read about this in the papers, sometimes you have to wonder what the purpose is in chasing down these men who are footsteps away from the grave. Does it really matter? After reading this book, I realize that crimes show more like these cannot be ignored or forgotten - no statute of limitations for cruelty or genocide. Good story! show less