Skip to main content

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.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The White Chicken Mystery

    The other night I happened to come home very late. It was the middle of the night and I was driving up a steep mountain road. Near the top I saw something white in my headlights. It was standing in the other lane, standing very still. It was a large white chicken. It was probably a rooster because I thought I could see his comb as I whizzed by at my customary pace. He never moved a muscle. This is weird, don't you think?      After a couple of days to consider this phenomenon, I have come up with some plausible answers for his bizarre behavior. 1. He was conflicted whether or not he should cross the road. 2. He was feeling cocky and decided to play chicken with the traffic. 3.He was being hen-pecked at home and had decided to end it all. 4. Someone had egged him on to do it. 5. He had just watched the movie Fantastic Four and decided to try to stop a truck the way that Ben Grimm did on the bridge. 6. He had driven himself crazy wondering if ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Egg Art

     Hey, everyone. One of the odd customs in America is the Easter Egg Hunt. Here at the Green Retreat, we do a hunt every Spring. I just ran across some of the pictures from this years hunt and it is obvious that an artist had sneaked into our midst. The orange egg is a rendering of one of the Angry Birds of gaming lore. If I were a bird and had to pass an egg that size, I would be angry too. Ha, ha.      We typically will dye about 10 dozen eggs and people get quite creative with their quotes and colors, as you can see. Many of the eggs are a bit risque for these pages. After having a few laughs, we hide the eggs. All of them are never found, which is cool. It is amusing to see old men (me) and all ages of folks, walking around with a basket on their arm. Some of the hiding spots are dastardly. Like eggs hidden in the guttering downspouts and ten foot up a tree. The kids are perhaps the most devious at hiding the colorful orbs, goi...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Biscuit

    Hey, everyone. What a relief that Christmas is over, huh? I don't think it was meant to be the way it is.     I started thinking about the so-called good 'ole days today. My wife says that at her house, they would take a left-over biscuit and shine their shoes before church. I one-upped her by saying, "Oh, yeah? I ate the biscuit when everyone got finished with it. And I was grateful for it." Truly, though, you can and people did, shine their shoes with a biscuit. Hey, they were greasy little buggers.     Speaking of greasy little buggers, I remember when everyone had wells and were very conservative about water, particularly those of us who had to crank a handle up and down to get a bucket of water. There was no daily bath. (No showers in those days, mate.) About twice a week we took a bath and here's the recipe: The oldest kid took a bath first, then the next oldest etc. You can see why younger siblings hated the older. Bathing in the...
Post a Comment
Read more