Daniel Silva

Sent to Zurich, Switzerland, to restore a painting owned by a reclusive millionaire banker, art expert and sometime Israeli agent Gabriel Allon discovers his would-be employer murdered and finds himself back in the espionage game, tangling with a rogue assassin he had trained. Reprint..

The English Assassin

Keernan Lanismore

I’ve read multiple books in this series out of sequence. I’m not sure if that had any impact, but I struggled to finish this one. It seemed to be a cookie cutter, by the numbers, Allon story. Not one of my favorites.

Art restorer and sometime spy Gabriel Allon is asked to visit Zurich, to clean the work of an Old Master for a millionaire banker. But when he gets there he finds the corpse of his client in a pool of blood beneath the masterpiece, and discovers that a secret collection of priceless paintings - stolen by Nazis in the war - is missing. With the Swiss authorities trying to pin the murder on Allon and a powerful cabal determined to make sure this wartime secret remains buried, the art restorer must use all his former spy skills to find out the truth. And with an assassin that he helped to train also on the loose, Allon will need all his wits just to stay alive ......

Liz Carpenter

Amanda Wells

I don't know what it is about this series - but I enjoy the Allon books in a "guilty pleasure" fashion. This book, the second of the series and the second I have read, was very strong to start, and I enjoyed that the author did not give into the spectacular but somewhat predictable climax that I anticipated. It was like a train on a track suddenly switching - a tangent that I hadn't expected, but made sense in retrospect. 

And the result of this change was equally as tense - yet would have been less so if it weren't for the build up to (view spoiler)[Venice (hide spoiler)]. The result also felt true to the characters, but.... I wanted a little more from Gabriel.

Nonetheless, the Allon series will remain a 'go-to' for me when I want a good read without the burden of high literature. When I want an action novel, that sneakily teaches me more about the context of Middle-Eastern/European politics and history (albeit from with an Israeli bias).

Simon Harrison

Compelling until it petered out. Loved the big conspiracy and the looted art, but the ending was frustrating. The titular characters journey didn't really make any sense.

Lots of fun, but the denouement let me down. I guess it was intended to

Ritwick SV

Kevin Raymakers

Corey Olsen

Spy turned art restorer Gabriel Allon finds himself accused of murder in this New York Times bestseller from Daniel Silva. An Israeli spy by trade and art restorer by preference, Gabriel Allon arrives in Zurich to restore the work of an Old Master for a millionaire banker—and finds himself standing in blood and framed for the man’s murder. While trying to clear his name, Allon is swept into a spiraling chain of events involving Nazi art theft, a decades-old suicide, and a dark and bloody trail of killings—some of them his own. The spy world Allon thought he had left behind has come back to haunt him. And he will have to fight for his life—against an assassin he himself helped train.

The English Assassin

Reviews