The English Assassin brings back Gabriel Allon, the appealingly melancholy art restorer with a double life as an Israeli secret agent, first introduced in 2000's The Kill Artist. Gabriel is sent to Zurich under a pseudonym to restore a Raphael belonging to a prominent Swiss banker and art collector, Augustus Rolfe, but upon arriving he finds Rolfe lying in a pool of blood. When Gabriel tries to leave Zurich, the Swiss police capture him immediately--and moreover, they know his real identity. He's released through some diplomatic string-pulling, but he soon discovers that Rolfe had requested a meeting with Israeli intelligence, for reasons unknown, just before his death.

Rolfe's daughter, Anna, is a world-class violinist attempting to rebuild her career after an accident that nearly destroyed one of her hands. But her physical scars are nothing compared to those on her psyche, left by her mother's suicide when Anna was a teenager. Temperamental and mistrustful, she nevertheless believes Gabriel's story, and reveals that Rolfe owned a secret collection of priceless French Impressionist paintings, apparently stolen by his murderers.

As Gabriel begins to put together the pieces of the puzzle, he faces two adversaries: a powerful group of men who would do anything to bury the past forever, and a hired killer who's planning a spectacular murder. Like The Kill Artist, The English Assassin balances fascinating characters, authentic-sounding historical detail, and plenty of glamorous international intrigue on the edge of a knife-keen plot. --Barrie Trinkle

From Publishers Weekly
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 Rtli 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. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Israeli intelligence operative Gabriel Allon is back, looking for another best seller (after The Marching Season). In a case that draws on Switzerland's links to the Nazis, art restorer Allon is sent to salvage a Raphael and finds the owner dead. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Spies are back. Part of the reason is September 11; part of the reason is that the genre itself is so compelling. Silva, who writes with the atmospheric grace and whiplash tension of le Carre, brings something special to the spy thriller: a multifaceted, believable hero whose sideline, spying, is only as intriguing as his regular job, restoring Old Masters. Gabriel Allon, a reluctant, off-and-on Israeli agent recruited after the 1972 Olympic Games, finds his real vocation in his studio in Cornwall, bringing past artworks back to their original glory. Sometimes, though, he's forced back into the deadly chess game of Israeli versus Palestinian spying. In this, the fifth in a critically acclaimed series, Allon accepts a commission to travel to Zurich to restore a Raphael at the home of a banker. At the last minute, Allon is told the banker will not be home; armed with private-security codes to gain access to the painting, he enters the home and stumbles over the dead body of the banker. In order to extricate himself from a web of suspicion, Allon must find the murderer. His investigation leads to the English assassin, a rogue terrorist whose casual killings (his send-off gift to his lovers is explosives in their luggage) are breathtakingly orchestrated. Silva makes a stunning contribution to the spy thriller. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Denver Post
Good assassin vs. bad assassin...rich multilayered and compelling.

Orlando Sentinel
A thriller that entertains as well as enlightens.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Daniel Silva's fourth novel, The Kill Artist, introduced an unusual but credible new hero: Gabriel Allon, a world-class art restorer and former member of the Israeli Secret Service. The Kill Artist brought Allon out of retirement to confront the Palestinian agent who destroyed his family. In Allon's latest adventure, The English Assassin, he comes out of retirement once again and finds himself enmeshed in a murder investigation whose roots reach back to the cataclysmic policies of Nazi Germany.

Allon's involvement begins when he accepts a commission to restore a priceless Raphael original. He travels to Zurich, only to find that his client -- wealthy Swiss banking magnate Augustus Rolfe -- has been shot to death just hours before. On the heels of that discovery, Allon is arrested by the Swiss police and narrowly avoids prosecution. When Allon's former mentor, legendary spymaster Ari Shamron, informs him that Rolfe had recently requested a meeting with the Israeli Secret Service, Allon launches an investigation of his own.

At the heart of the novel's central mystery lies another mystery. According to the victim's daughter, world-famous violinist Anna Rolfe, a valuable collection of Impressionist paintings disappeared from Rolfe's house at the time of the murder. The paintings, as Allon discovers, may have been part of the vast collection looted by the Nazis before and during World War II. As Allon pursues the missing paintings, he begins to understand the close -- in fact, collaborative -- relationship that once existed between the Nazi hierarchy and the wealthy banking community of neutral Switzerland.

Silva's prose is clean and uncluttered, his action sequences crisp and effective, his sense of place impeccable, and his varied cast of characters all sharply individualized. Ultimately, though, it's the impressive level of secondary detail -- the scrupulous historical research, the insights into the arcane world of the professional art restorer -- that give this book its distinctive flavor and lift it above the level of the garden variety espionage novel. Like The Kill Artist, The English Assassin is an intelligent, informed, engrossing entertainment that is deeply rooted in the historical realities of a violent, tragic century. (Bill Sheehan)

Bill Sheehan reviews horror, suspense, and science fiction for Cemetery Dance, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and other publications. His book-length critical study of the fiction of Peter Straub, At the Foot of the Story Tree, won the International Horror Guild's award for best nonfiction book of 2000.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Gabriel Allon had done much in his lifetime. A sometime Israeli spy by trade, an art restorer by preference, he knew more than he wanted to know about death and betrayal and secrets, but that didn't keep him from being surprised by the scene before him now." "An assignment to clean an Old Master at the home of a millionaire banker had led him to a house in Zurich, and standing in the room now, he smelled the odor of salt and rust, felt the dampness of the carpet beneath his feet. He touched his fingers to the carpet and brought them to his face. He was standing in blood. And he knew his life would never be the same." Before he is through, Allon will find himself swept into a spiraling chain of events involving stolen art, a decades-old suicide, and a dark and bloody trail of killings - some of them his own. The spy world he thought he had put aside will envelope him once again. And he will battle for his life against the assassin he himself helped train, and who will demonstrate to his teacher just how much he has learned.

FROM THE CRITICS

Denver Post

Good assassin vs. bad assassin...rich multilayered and compelling.

Orlando Sentinel

A thriller that entertains as well as enlightens.

Publishers Weekly

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 R tli 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. (Mar. 4) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

In his fifth thriller (after The Marching Season), Silva enters the intrigues of the Swiss bankers who helped Nazi collectors acquire impressionist paintings owned by Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Fans will recognize hero Gabriel Allon, an art restorer who doubles as an Israeli spy. This time around, his adversary is a rogue Englishman whom Gabriel himself once trained in the deadly craft of killing on command. Adding to the spine-tingling plot is a lovely and renowned violinist, the grown daughter of a banker whose war years put him at the heart of the predatory scheme. The murder of this banker sets the hares after the rabbit. Fueled by intense, fast, and unrelenting action, Silva's latest follows spies, sellers, lovers, and historians to a chilling climax. Public libraries should purchase multiple copies to meet demand. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/01.] Barbara Conaty, Library of Congress Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly