The English Girl Mass Market Author: Visit Amazon's Daniel Silva Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0062073184 | Format: PDF
The English Girl Mass Market Description
Amazon.com Review
An Amazon Best Book of the Month, July 2013: The setup: A beautiful woman is snatched from her vacation on Corsica. A ransom note reaches 10 Downing Street. An ambitious, unfaithful prime minister seriously needs a fixer. Which leads his fixers to art restorer and Israeli spy, Gabriel Allon, one of the more believable and likable heroes in recent spy fiction. To call The English Girl a page turner is an oversimplification. Smart, unpredictable, and packed with bits of history, art, heart, and imagination, this is a page turner to be savored. Let me just say that I like John LeCarre. Big fan. Still impressively relevant and prolific into his 80s. But the torch must pass to someone. And it’s been a while since I grabbed anyone by the lapels and said, “Read this now,” so let me strongly suggest that you take The English Girl to the beach, or wherever summer may take you. Daniel Silva isn’t quite LeCarre. He’s a more modern breed, with some major DNA overlap. (Other DNA-sharing: Graham Greene, Joseph Kanon, Alan Furst.) When it comes to the vast club of practitioners of international spycraft, Silva is a cut above them all, and The English Girl is a masterwork. --Neal Thompson
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Booklist
The psychology of kidnapping and blackmail forms the core of Silva’s sixteenth spy story, an extended, scary chess game between two opponents, with the fates of both a young woman and the British government at stake. Series hero Gabriel Allon, who has worked for the Israeli intelligence as a spy and avenging angel (starting with Operation Wrath of God against the Black September terrorists), is convinced by a longtime British MI5 friend to help out the current prime minster. The woman with whom the married PM has been having an affair, herself a rising star in the government, has been kidnapped while on vacation on the island of Corsica. Her kidnappers send the PM a video of the woman admitting to the affair, sure to bring scandal and ruin if widely released. Finding the woman involves much guesswork and danger, with trips to locales ranging from the south of France to Paris to London to Moscow. As usual, Silva takes the reader hostage from page one with his canny mix of spy craft and suspense. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Silva’s ongoing ability to combine le Carré–like texture with high-energy plotting has produced a string of commercial and critical successes. Chalk up another one. --Connie Fletcher
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
See all Editorial Reviews
- Series: Gabriel Allon
- Mass Market Paperback: 544 pages
- Publisher: Harper; Reissue edition (February 18, 2014)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0062073184
- ISBN-13: 978-0062073181
- Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.3 x 1.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
I wish the real world had someone like Gabriel Allon--art restorer, spy, and master assassin-(though it would be nice to avoid the last category) who was able to solve kidnappings, capture criminals, and expose corruption as quickly and completely as he does. We don't, so we have to settle for imaginary ones.
In THE ENGLISH GIRL, a beautiful, intelligent young woman, Madeline Hart, was on vacation in Corsica with friends from work when she disappeared. Madeline worked for England's Prime Minister and was on her way to notable success in government but her disappearance is not reported to the usual authorities. With an election coming up, the Prime Minister, Jonathan Lancaster, doesn't want the story publicized because it might harm his chances of reelection: Madeline is his mistress.
A month later, he received a ransom note with very little information but saying if the demands weren't met, she would be killed in seven days. Gabriel Allon was called in but Lancaster and his close advisor, Jeremy Fallon, refused to follow Allon's advice for the negotiation. The kidnappers demand they want $10,000,000 pounds to be delivered by Allon. He agreed to be the courier and built a team to help determine who kidnapped her and why as well.
Just when everything should be settled, everything fell apart instead. (Hint: in a book of almost 475 pages, you know it won't be solved by page 212.)
The plot takes him to Corsica, France, England and Russia where he met several characters from previous books and introduces some new ones. Like all of Daniel Silva's books, there are many twists and things are not always what they seem to be. The end of the book points to a different life for Allon. Should be very interesting.
The wonderful writing is fast-paced cohesive.
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