The Messenger
Daniel Silva, 2006
Penguin Group USA
512 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451221728
Summary
Sometime Israeli secret agent Gabriel Allon would prefer to pursue his love of art restoration, but threats of terrorism keep calling him back. In The Messenger, the computer of a dead al-Qaeda operative holds scattered clues to a massive future attack. To thwart that offensive, Allon must move with speed and stealth. Filled with trapdoors and plot surprises, this is a first-class post-9/11 thriller. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 30, 1959
• Where—Michigan, USA
• Raised—California
• Currently—lives in Washington, D.C.
Daniel Silva was attending graduate school in San Francisco when United Press International offered him a temporary job covering the 1984 Democratic National Convention. Later that year, the wire service offered him full-time employment; he quit grad school and went to work for UPI—first in San Francisco, then in Washington, D.C., and finally as a Middle East Correspondent posted in Cairo. While covering the Iran-Iraq War in 1987, he met NBC correspondent Jamie Gangel. They married, and Silva returned to Washington to take a job with CNN.
Silva was still at CNN when, with the encouragement of his wife, he began work on his first novel, a WWII espionage thriller. Published in 1997, The Unlikely Spy became a surprise bestseller and garnered critical acclaim. ("Evocative.... Memorable..." said the Washington Post; "Briskly suspenseful," raved the New York Times). On the heels of this somewhat unexpected success, Silva quit his job to concentrate on writing.
Other books followed, all earning respectable reviews; but it was Silva's fourth novel that proved to be his big breakthrough. Featuring a world-famous art restorer and sometime Israeli agent named Gabriel Allon, The Kill Artist (2000) fired public imagination and soared to the top of the bestseller charts. Gabriel Allon has gone on to star in several sequels, and his creator has become one of our foremost novelists of espionage intrigue, earning comparisons to such genre superstars as John le Carre, Frederick Forsythe, and Robert Ludlum. Silva's books have been translated into more than 25 languages and have been published around the world. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
[The book] is written in broad strokes, with villains more loathsome, terrorist attacks more spectacular and a plot more melodramatic than he's given us in the past. In terms of controversy, it won't hurt that his chief villain is a Saudi billionaire who finances terrorist attacks and is, in truth, a stand-in for the House of Saud itself, which "started the fire of the global jihad movement in the first place," Silva says. The author is quite serious in his contempt for the Saudis—and U.S. officials who are seduced by them—and yet, in an interview that accompanied the book, he jokes that he wants The Messenger to be a good beach read. There is, of course, nothing wrong with a writer wanting to have it both ways.
Patrick Anderson - Washington Post
Bestseller Silva continues to warrant comparisons to John le Carre, as shown by his latest thriller starring Israeli art restorer and spymaster Gabriel Allon. Ahmed bin Shafiq, a former chief of a clandestine Saudi intelligence unit, targets the Vatican for attack, in particular Pope Paul VII and his top aide, Monsignor Luigi Donati, who both appeared in Silva's previous novel, Prince of Fire. Shafiq, who now heads his own terrorist network, is allied with a militant Islamic Saudi businessman known as Zizi, a true believer committed to the destruction of all infidels. Gabriel's challenge is to infiltrate Zizi's organization, a task he assigns to a beautiful American art expert, Sarah Bancroft. Gabriel promises he'll protect her, but plans go awry, and by the end Sarah faces torture and death. While Sarah's fate is never in doubt, the way Silva resolves his plot will keep readers right where he wants them: on the edges of their seats.
Publishers Weekly
Echoes of 9/11 haunt Silva's sixth Gabriel Allon thriller. An attack on the Vatican leads the art restorer and Mossad agent on the trail of a wealthy Saudi suspected of financing al-Qaeda. Because Zizi collects Impressionist art, Gabriel creates a fake Van Gogh and enlists Sarah Bancroft, an American art historian, to infiltrate the ruthless billionaire's entourage. The author masterfully weaves together the worlds of art, espionage, and terrorism; few thriller writers balance entertainment and serious issues so well. The novel's structure is unusual for Silva, with Gabriel becoming secondary to Sarah in the second half, but the fears she faces are gripping. Recommended for all collections.
Michael Adams - Library Journal
The five previous spy thrillers featuring Gabriel Allon addressed topics including the Munich Olympics massacre, Yasir Arafat, and the Vatican. The Messenger, about global terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, resounded just as loudly with critics. Fortunately, Daniel Silva has also written an ingenious, thrilling, and entertaining book with complex characters and settings, from London and Jerusalem to Rome, that serve the plot well. While one critic cited Silva's bias toward Israel, the majority felt that the author created characters with different perspectives and left readers to form their own opinions. In the end, they agreed with the assess-ment of the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Gabriel Allon remains one of the most intriguing heroes of any thriller series."
Bookmarks Magazine
(Starred review.) An engrossing and beautifully written contemporary spy thriller. —Connie Fletcher
Booklist
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Messenger:
1. What is the significance of Gabriel's name? How does he fit his name? Consider, too, his last name—Allon—which according to Silva means oak tree in Hebrew.
2. Talk about Gabriel Allon's back story—what in his life has inspired his devotion to Israel and his work in stopping international terrorism?
3. How does Silva portray Saudia Arabia and its involvement in both international terrorism and U.S. political life? What, for instance, makes the involvement of Abdul Aziz al-Bakari difficult for the American president and the C.I.A? Do you find Silva's depiction of the Saudis accurate or stretched?
4. Talk about Silva's characters—Sarah Bancroft, for example. Which are more fully developed and emotionally complex...and which are more one-dimensional?
5. What derails Gabriel's carefully laid plans with Sarah? Who (or what) is at fault?
5. What about Silva's depiction of torture? How did it affect your reading? Did it heighten your feeling of suspense or instill dread, fear, anger...what?
6. Silva raises difficult a number of issues: how to punish criminals/terrorists in the absence of a court of law; what stance should religious people take in the face of terrorism; how far can a country go to protect itself? All of these questions remain topical to modern geo-politics. Where do you stand on any one, or all, of these issues?
6. What do you know about the history of jihad, and how accurate do you feel The Messenger depicts terrorism's history? Some readers/critics have criticized Silva's worldview: feeling that Silva unfairly portrays all Arabs negatively—as evil or potential terrorists—and all Israelis as good. Agree...or not?
7. Did you enjoy the detailed information about the art world? Or did you find it distracting?
8. The Messenger is the second in a trilogy of books dealing with terrorism in today's world—Prince of Fire is the first and The Secret Servant is the third. Have you read either of these books...or any others in the Gabriel Allon series (totalling 8 in all)? If so, how does this book compare with the others?
9. Has this book altered your view of the roots of international terrorism...or how it should be confronted? If so, how. If not, why not?
10. Is the book's ending a satisfying one? Predictable or not?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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