Daniel Silva’s first Gabriel Allon thriller, The Kill Artist, hit The New York Times bestseller list when it debuted in 2000. Fans quickly embraced Allon, whose day job as a respected artist and art restorer gave him cover as Israel’s most effective spy and assassin. Allon’s adventures have been documented in 19 additional novels. The most recent, A Death in Cornwall, takes Allon from Gunwalloe, a quiet seaside village in Cornwall where he spent many years hiding out, to Corsica, Paris, Geneva, Monte Carlo, and London. The search for a missing Picasso turns into a battle against some of the most powerful people and organizations in the world. Allon may be outnumbered, but he is never the underdog. Using his exceptional skills and his contacts, he’s able to strike back at the enemy.
Allon’s home base is Venice, where he lives with his second wife, Chiara, and their twins, a daughter and a son. Having officially retired from the intelligence service, Allon is now director of the paintings department at the Tiepolo Restoration Company. Chiara is the firm’s general manager. They’ve come to Gunwalloe to spend some down time. But in Allon’s world, trouble seems to find him.
Charlotte Blake, an Oxford professor, is considered one of the world’s foremost experts in APR, artistic provenance research. Blake was in Cornwall working on authenticating a Picasso, described as “untitled portrait of a woman in the surrealist style, oil on canvas.” Blake is found murdered, ostensibly at the hands of a serial killer dubbed “The Chopper” who kills with a hatchet.
Detective Sergeant Timothy Peel, who bonded with Allon as a boy, is now 35 and still in need of his mentor’s help. Allon also left Peel his restored ketch, which is where Allon finds the young man upon arriving in Gunwalloe. Peel lays out his suspicions, that Blake’s murder was not the work of the serial killer. A second death in Paris, by someone who was corresponding with Blake, confirms Allon’s theory that someone wanted the provenance of the Picasso to remain unknown.
Allon’s search for the missing painting, estimated to be worth $100 million, will take him inside the Geneva Freeport, a large warehouse facility where the very wealthy are able to park their valuable artwork to avoid paying taxes on those purchases. The Picasso was originally owned by a Jew, Bernard Lévy, who had the painting stolen by the Nazis during the war. Besides finding Blake’s killer, Allon hopes to find the painting and return it to Lévy’s heirs.
He quickly zeroes in on a gallery within the Freeport run by Edmond Richard and crafts an elaborate scheme to get Richard’s attention. A former Allon lover, the famous opera singer, Anna Rolfe, known not only for her talent, but for her immense wealth inherited from her father, would approach Richard offering for sale six oil paintings by Van Gogh, Renoir, Cézanne, Monet, Modigliani, and Toulouse-Lautrec. The paintings, of course, won’t be by those artists, but will be created by Allon and authenticated by one of his contacts.
Because of Rolfe’s reputation, Richard agrees to the meeting. He’s impressed with the paintings and, after some negotiation, agrees to consider her request: that she would sell him the six paintings for the opportunity to acquire the Picasso. But before the deal can be completed, another murder happens, throwing Allon and his allies into serious danger. There’s more at stake than just recovering a painting. Allon and his team race to stop a plot by a group whose goal is no less than a takeover of the British government.
Silva began his career as a journalist for UPI, first based in Washington, D.C., and then in Cairo. At CNN, he was a producer for “Crossfire” and “Capital Gang.” After his first novel, The Unlikely Spy, a non-Allon thriller, hit the New York Times bestseller list, he left CNN to pursue writing full-time. Married to CNN special correspondent Jamie Gangel, he converted from Christianity to Judaism.
Silva’s early experience as a journalist as well as his ability to delve into what’s happening in the highest levels of government, finance, and culture around the world, informs his plots and makes each Allon thriller an educational and compelling read. A Death in Cornwall certainly meets that standard. In a comprehensive Author’s Note, Silva, while beginning with a disclaimer about the people, places, and events in the book, points out that elements of the basic plot are true. The Geneva Freeport, for example, operates with abandon, allowing the wealthy to store their artwork. “There are an estimated 1.2 million paintings stored in the Freeport, including more than a thousand works by Picasso,” Silva says. Aside from allowing these billionaire art collectors to avoid taxes on their sales and purchases, these paintings are not available to be seen by the public.
If you’ve not yet discovered Silva’s Gabriel Allon books, you have a lot of great reading ahead.
A Death in Cornwall
Daniel Silva
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