A Death in Vienna
From AwardAnnals
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| Author(s) | Daniel Silva |
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| Publisher | Putnam Publishing Group |
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| The sins of the past reverberate into the present, in an extraordinary novel by the new master of international suspense.
It was an ordinary-looking photograph. Just the portrait of a man. But the very sight of it chilled Allon to the bone. Art restorer and sometime spy Gabriel Allon is sent to Vienna to authenticate a painting, but the real object of his search becomes something else entirely: to find out the truth about the photograph that has turned his world upside down. It is the face of the unnamed man who brutalized his mother in the last days of… | |
The sins of the past reverberate into the present, in an extraordinary novel by the new master of international suspense.
It was an ordinary-looking photograph. Just the portrait of a man. But the very sight of it chilled Allon to the bone.
Art restorer and sometime spy Gabriel Allon is sent to Vienna to authenticate a painting, but the real object of his search becomes something else entirely: to find out the truth about the photograph that has turned his world upside down. It is the face of the unnamed man who brutalized his mother in the last days of World War II, during the Death March from Auschwitz. But is it really the same one? If so, who is he? How did he escape punishment? Where is he now?
Fueled by an intensity he has not felt in years, Allon cautiously begins to investigate; but with each layer that is stripped away, the greater the evil that is revealed, a web stretching across sixty years and thousands of lives. Soon, the quest for one monster becomes the quest for many. And the monsters are stirring…
Rich with sharply etched characters and prose, and a plot of astonishing intricacy, this is an uncommonly intelligent thriller by one of our very best writers.
Honors
Reviews
Amazon.com
Gabriel Allon hasn’t been back to Vienna since his wife and child died there in a terrorist bombing. But when his mentor in the Israeli intelligence agency dispatches him to the Austrian capital to investigate a murderous explosion at the Wartime Claims and Inquiry Office, his presence draws the attention of police officials who have reasons to stand in the way of his investigation. When a concentration camp survivor is killed who could link the father of Austria’s next chancellor to Nazi atrocities and an ongoing coverup by the Catholic church, Allon discovers another connection to the conspiracy, this one closer to his own past than he could ever have imagined.
This is the third of Silva’s thrillers featuring Allon, the art restorer who’s also a spy. (The Confessor and The English Assassin are the first two.) In an endnote, the author calls them a “completed cycle dealing with the unfinished business of the Holocaust”. Allon is such a compelling hero that one hopes Silva, a skilled craftsman and a terrific storyteller, will bring him back in another series. —Jane Adams, Amazon.com
Barnes and Noble
This is the third entry in Silva’s espionage series (following The English Assassin and The Confessor) focused on the continuing repercussions of the Holocaust in the art world, the religious sphere, and the political arena. Gabriel Allon, a restorer of paintings and frescoes, is also an Israeli agent sent to Vienna to investigate a bombing at the Austrian Wartime Claims and Inquiries office. The case takes a bizarre personal twist when Allon learns that his mother, a concentration camp survivor, faced the sadistic Erich Radek, a notorious Nazi believed to be the perpetrator of the bombing. Newly fueled by vengeance, Allon sets off on his mission, as various assassins and spies seek to aid or hinder his purpose.
The characters in Death in Vienna are either covering up evils from the past or are motivated by revenge to throw themselves full force into the deadly game. In an author’s note, Silva informs us that this novel closes his cycle of books dealing with the Holocaust. We can only hope that he returns soon with more rapid-fire, high-style thrillers.
