The English Assassin

The excellent John Lee performs this international thriller with the cool aplomb we would expect from the bankers, spies, diplomats, and assassins who populate it. Art theft from Jewish citizens during the Hitler years and the premise that Hitler could not have financed his war without the help of Swiss bankers provide Daniel Silva with the perfect background for a story of accusations, suppositions, intrigue, betrayal, and murder. Sometime Israeli special agent and art restorer Gabriel Allon is hired to restore a Raphael. He finds his employer, a Swiss banker, murdered. Silva's plot and John Lee's performance take us into places we've wondered about but have never seen, and to places we never even dreamed existed. It's a world in which paranoia is what keeps people alive. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine

Starred review from January 14, 2002
Switzerland's shameful behavior in WWII provides the backdrop for this superbly crafted thriller that puts Silva at the forefront of his generation of foreign intrigue specialists. Here, the former CNN correspondent also appears to have settled on a main character to propel his promising line—Gabriel Allon, the art restorer and Israeli hit man who starred in last year's acclaimed The Kill Artist. Just a few pages into this sequel, Allon finds himself the apparent victim of a double cross. When he arrives to restore a Raphael owned by reclusive Swiss banker Augustus Rolfe, Allon not only discovers the banker dead but finds himself the number one suspect. The charge doesn't stick, however, and when he is released from custody, he vows to find out who tried to frame him. His first stop is Rolfe's daughter, Anna, one of the world's top violinists and a woman haunted by her family's heritage of wartime greed and cruelty. Allon catches the attention of Switzerland's secretive power structure, which intends to stymie any further investigation into Rolfe's murder and the theft of his suspiciously acquired art collection. The so-called Council of Rütli contracts with a shadowy hit man, known only as the Englishman, to eliminate Allon and anyone else who threatens to expose Switzerland's past. The action unfolds in tightly focused scenes played out across a spectrum of European capitals and more pastoral settings. As a historical framework, the secrets of the Bahnhofstrasse are well-trod territory, yet Silva's sophisticated treatment—polished prose, an edgy mood, convincing research—gives his plot a crisp, almost urgent quality. Agent, Esther Newberg of ICM. 100,000 first printing; $100,000 national advertising campaign.