The Messenger [Paperback]

Loved this book. I've not read anything anywhere near as good as this since I used to read "Ian Flemming". I actually lost quite a bit of sleep over several nights as I couldn't put the book down. Very low brow - hardly a taxing read, but with a gripping style that's perfect for a poolside read on holiday.

Best of all the characters are fairly three dimensional, and by the middle of the book you actually start to care about their survival, and that they will reach their aims.

Highly recommended escapism. Can't wait for the film franchise to pick it up.

The spy novel genre hasn't been the same since the cold war ended. Magnificent fictional forays and counter-forays of east and west against one another with the fate of the world in the balance provided marvelous drama that led to wonderful plots, seat-squirming suspense, and intense emotional involvement with the characters. Many have tried to resurrect the spy novel genre with modern-day terror and antiterrorist activities. In most cases, these stories don't carry the same weight. It's as though we know the tales are too fanciful to be real.

In the Messenger, Daniel Silva has recaptured some of the zest of the cold war spy stories in an intense tale of an innocent sent out among the lethal to identify a terrorist leader. You'll easily find yourself imagining that you are Sarah Bancroft, a curator at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., who is recruited to infiltrate a terrorist-supporting Saudi billionaire's entourage.

The plot is quite a complex one. Gabriel Allon has been retired from spying while he quietly pursues his profession of art restorer. Israeli intelligence is checking out a terror suspect when the man is accidentally killed, leaving his laptop computer to be accessed. From the images, the Israelis conclude that the Vatican is a target. Allon is brought in to see what can be done to avoid an attack. Soon, events roll into motion that require more than prevention at the Vatican as the Israelis target a former Saudi official who seems to be running terror networks. Sarah Bancroft is recruited, and the hunt is on. Time is of the essence. Can they identify the target before the terrorists identify Sarah's true allegiances?

The book's main weakness is that connecting the book's opening to the rest of the series takes up a lot of space. If you've read the other books, you don't need that much background. If you haven't read the other books, it's still too much. Then, the development of the spy gambit takes awhile to get off the ground. As a result, not much of the good material in the book occurs before page 110. But stick around. If you are patient with the opening, you'll be pleased with the rest, especially after page 162.

Gabriel Allon is a man who never sleeps, who crosses time-zones as if he were going to the shops, changes his appearance as if he were the master of disguise, spends time painting or restoring masterpieces and, when he has a moment, saves the Pope from an uncertain journey to the afterlife - twice.

If you think all this is too far-fetched, you haven't read Silva's earlier books. But now Allon is older, though not necessarily wiser, he still manages to kill off a few fundamentalists - well a lot, really but yet still they come, leaving room for further stories in the same vein.

As the holiday season approaches, these are books to take with you. Action-packed, hitting the spot for many people, pushing the case for a continuing remembrance of the persecution of the Jews and yet, one can't help liking the man. At some point, Allon will have to slow down and take a back seat. To a certain extent, this is now happening and, for me, because of that, the story slows down, too. Unfortunately, so far, there is no-one waiting in the wings for whom the reader has any empathy, so it remains to be seen how the author will cope with this. Up to and including this book, Silva's novels all follow the same path, the targets are the same, only the names have changed. With the Cold War long gone, the opportunities for a relentless pursuit of the bad guys is only ever going to lead in one direction.

Maybe next time, Allon may face up to Chechen terrorists, Georgian separatists, Chinese triads - anybody really to give the reader some variety. In the meantime, we have to deal with certain elements in Saudi Arabia, long-believed to be at the centre of fundamental terrorism. If only it were so easy to get rid of them. But it is the nature of stories that you suspend disbelief and just settle down to enjoy the read.

Silva writes very well; for his fans - and there are many, myself included, you are sure of a decent thriller. For new readers, although the book can stand alone, I think you do need knowledge of what has happened in earlier books. As with most of us who find themselves older than they realised, it takes a while to get going in the morning. This book is similar but once the action starts, Silva is back on form. I eagerly await the next outing, assuming Allon has not gone off to live a life of domestic bliss. Unlikely.