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Book Review: Fallen Angel

    Hello, everyone. Thanks for stopping by the green retreat. I have been reading an excellent novel by Daniel Silva titled The Fallen Angel. This is yet another in Silva's series of books about Gabriel Allon. Gabriel is a sometimes-retired Israeli spy. He has ties to the Mossad but prefers to work on paintings, restoring priceless works by the old masters. His skills in both fields has endeared him to certain people in the Vatican. People who are at the very top levels of this city-state.
    As our story opens, Gabriel is restoring a painting at the Vatican. One night a lady falls to her death not far from where he is working. The Pope and his personal assistant ask Gabriel to investigate her death. It soon becomes apparent that she was murdered. As he delves into the circumstances, he stumbles upon a ring of art thieves and people who deal in the illegal sale of art. These people are not concerned with the expectations of honest dealers in a legal provenence for a work, merely in the money to be made. So ruthless are they that murder is a quite acceptable option in covering up their work, even if it happens in the Vatican itself.
     As Gabriel keeps pulling on the string, the plot unravels and  thickens. The art criminals are tied in with a terrorist group who are using the money from art sales to fund plots against many nations. This leads Gabriel into coming out of retirement and working with his old friends in the Mossad. A bomb goes off in St. Moritz, terrorists are killed within sight of a church in Berlin and still the action has not peaked. It is only after Gabriel becomes the Pope's personal bodyguard that all things become clear.
     In a nail-biter of an ending, in Jerusalem, during a Papal visit, Gabriel finds out that even the Pope's life is not the ultimate target of his enemies.
     This book is a terrific read. Crafted by one of the best of his genre, and his generation, this is a book which I would rate as a 4.5 stars out of 5. Good stuff.
     From the reader's green retreat, I'm CE Wills.

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