Thursday, February 10, 2011

The Secret Servant

The Secret Servant by Daniel Silva  385 pp.

Another in the Gabriel Allon series, this time involving the kidnapping of Dr. Elizabeth Halton, daughter of the American Ambassador to the Court of St. James, by Egyptian terrorists. Allon is sent to Amsterdam to purge the files of a murdered terror analyst. In the process he uncovers a plot involving an Egyptian terrorist group called The Sword of Allah. Synchronized bombings take place at various European locales. Allon is just seconds too late to stop the kidnapping but manages to kill or seriously wound some of the terrorists. The combined forces of the Israelis, Americans, and British and a former member of the terrorist cell join in the desperate search to save the woman.The final result leaves Allon questioning his trade and may leave him dead.

Silva is a master storyteller and researches his subjects in great detail. Even though it is fiction, many details about the Mubarek regime in Egypt and the instability there are based on fact. I have to admit, it made me very nervous about the current situation there.

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