Rating: 4/5
Review:
An enjoyable spy novel
I enjoyed House Of Spies but I did have my reservations
about it.
There is a lot to enjoy here. Daniel Silva creates a good story of
terrorist atrocities and the subsequent joint operation between the
Intelligence Agencies of Israel, Britain, France and the USA to locate and kill
the jihadi mastermind behind them, with whom the main protagonist Gabriel Allon
and his fellow Israeli agents have a lot of history. The detail and careful plotting hang together
well, there is a convincing picture of the jockeying for position between the
Agencies and the characters are pretty well painted. The later parts of the book are very exciting
in places and it's a very decent read a lot of the time.
I did think that some of the storytelling was a bit
clunky. I'm all for detail and careful
scene-setting for realism, but a little tightening up might have helped things
along in the early stages. Silva isn't
shy of a cliché, either, and stale usages like "thick as thieves",
"fight tooth and nail," people
talking about "our little
subterfuge" and so on crop up often
enough to intrude.
Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book overall and I can recommend
it as a decent read – especially for a day on the beach or the like.
(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)
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