The Secret Servant

THE SECRET SERVANT; Daniel Silva; New York, Putnam's, 2007; Fiction; 385pgs.
Gabriel Allon is back (huzzah!), this time in a case that begins in Holland in a manner reminiscent of the actual murder of Theo van Gogh by an Islamist terrorist in 2004. In Daniel Silva’s “The Secret Servant,” Allon, art restorer and Israeli spymaster, is called into action when a Dutch anti-terrorism expert, Solomon Rosner, is killed in the streets of Amsterdam. Sent to Holland to sort through Rosner’s files, Allon, with the help of a mysterious Egyptian informant, discovers a plan for a large-scale terrorist attack in London, which also includes the abduction of the daughter of the American ambassador to the Court of St. James. As Gabriel and company frantically search for Elizabeth Halton before The Sword of Allah executes her, we meet the usual gallery of memorable characters, from Allon’s shadowy Egyptian source to “the Sphinx,” a terrorist mastermind and amoral butcher whose true identity has been heretofore impossible to discover. In “The Secret Servant” Daniel Silva manages to convey boatloads of information about how covert agencies operate, and about the exponential rise in the terrorist threat to Europe, without heavy-handedness or slackening of pace. Great summer reading, but with more substance than most beach books.