The kill artist

by Daniel Silva

Paperback, 2004

Status

Available

Call number

F SIL

Collection

Publication

Berkley (2004), 514 pages

Description

Fiction. Suspense. Thriller. HTML:From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Other Woman comes the first novel in the thrilling series featuring legendary assassin Gabriel Allon. Immersed in the quiet, meticulous life of an art restorer, former Israeli intelligence operative Gabriel Allon keeps his past well behind him. But now he is being called back into the gameâ??and teamed with an agent who hides behind her own mask...as a beautiful fashion model.   Their target: a cunning terrorist on one last killing spree, a Palestinian zealot who played a dark part in Gabrielâ??s past. And what begins as a manhunt turns into a globe-spanning duel fueled by both political intrigue and deep personal passi

User reviews

LibraryThing member Smiler69
I discovered Daniel Silva because of the many recommendations I saw here on LT, and wasn't disappointed with my first experience. The first of the Gabriel Allon series literally starts off with a bang, and our hero, who is a leader in the field of art restoration, is cajoled out of early retirement
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from his other job as a spy for the Israeli secret service when an Israeli ambassador and his wife are murdered in Paris. The suspect is a known Palestinian terrorist who is also a master of disguise. Allon is expected to track him down in Europe and kill him in absolute secrecy. Of course, there is a beautiful woman in the picture who may or may not be a damsel in distress. This thriller was well put together, and I was impressed with the way Silva handled the touchy political issues at hand by presenting both sides of the conflict fairly and letting the readers make up their own mind. I'll be looking for the next in the series soon enough.
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LibraryThing member FicusFan
I read this book for RL book group. It is for my mystery group and it is more thriller than mystery. It is took me a while, mostly because I wanted it to be over, and found it hard to pick up and easy to put down. The writing was good but that didn't help, it was the content that was the problem
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for me.

I used to like this type of book when I was younger, but now it seems slick, superficial, smarmy and manipulative. I don't know if I have changed and matured, if after 9/11 I am less interested in the casual murder of others, or if this book is just not done well.

Its very simplistic, the good guy can kill people and be called an assassin, because he is killing the bad guy. The bad guy kills people and is called a terrorist. Yet both are committing murder.

The characters are Israelis and Palestinians, very predictably portrayed.

The thing is both are human, both have family and friends who will be the ones to suffer the lingering damage of murder and it will cause another round of killing/dying/suffering.

The murders are payback for previous wrongs and will most assuredly generate new murders.

I suppose I can't fault the writer for not having a better solution or story, since we are struggling with the same issues in real life, but the author adds nothing new to the mix. It feels ghoulish and sad to watch these doomed people for entertainment purposes.

The story follows Gabriel Allon who is a retired Israeli assassin. In retirement he uses his skill in art to become an art restorer. He of course is very good at it, so he lives a comfortable life, on the outside. On the inside he is troubled by his past actions, kindled by the memory of his wife and son being blown up in a car bomb.

This was were I felt manipulated by the author. I thought Silva used the love of a family to make Allon seem less like a killer and more like a normal person. He is supposed to be seen as morally superior to his boss, the hard, scheming man who plans killings. Please. Then the bomb incident was two-fold, it made it seem like he had paid for his past evil, that he suffered and didn't get off free and of course it meant he could have sexy encounters with beautiful agents all while conforming to modern morality. I wanted to throw the book against a wall.

The story is of the bad guy, Tariq a Palestinian assassin, killing high profile Jewish targets around the world. Allon's boss was also retired, but has been asked back because the current regime was bungling publicly. He of course talks Allon into returning. Allon will come back to hunt Tariq, because he is the one who blew up the car with Allon's wife and child in it.

So this is not just protecting the innocent, avenging the wrongs done to the country of Israel and the Jewish people/religion/culture, but a personal vendetta. Hooks to catch the sympathy of many readers. I just felt the killings were there to provide justification for more killings.

The bad guy Tariq kills an American too at the start. He uses unsuspecting women as cover, and then kills them. Since only American lives seem to be of value, that had to happen to make Tariq a bad guy we will really hate. To be fair, Silva gives Tariq a childhood of suffering extreme violence and the loss of family at the hands of the Israeli's in the refugee camps in Lebanon. Silva can say he is not one-sided, but presents both sides in a bad light. It means Tariq is also working for vengeance, and feels justified in his actions.

The whole thing has the feeling of the calculus of hate and violence balanced so finely to make everything seem justified and inevitable. I just felt sad and dirty reading the book.

The writing is very good, if shallow and slick. There are lots of summaries so that the information is packed in, but can be read quickly. Allon works with a beautiful high fashion model who is also an operative, and has romantic feelings for him. The guilt he feels about his family, prevents him from accepting her. Ho - Hum. The only interesting character to me, is Peel, a young English child who is an observer of Allon the art restorer.

There is a small amount about art restoration, but not much, it is flimsy window dressing.

The ending at least is not so pat. There is a twist with the final victim, and with the terrorist. Allon and the girl are still circling.

I don't know if the subject - violence in the Middle East was also what put me off. What happens there, impacts the US, even if we are not involved. The thrillers I liked in my younger days, were about Japan and ninjas, subjects that really didn't involve the US. I am too young to view them as the menace of WWII, and I read the books before their brief economic menace. I haven't re-read them as an older adult, so I don't know if they would still interest me, or if I would find them sad, contrived and dirty now too.

I don't plan to read anymore of this author or this series.
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LibraryThing member bobbrussack
This is not a full review. At least, not yet. I write now only to draw attention to what must be Mr. Silva's homage to John Le Carre. In both "The Kill Artist" and Le Carre's "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," an important character is a mysterious newcomer -- a man who arrives at an out-of-the-way
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place in England apparently intent on keeping a low profile. In "The Kill Artist," the character is the spy Gabriel Allon. In "Tinker, Tailor," it is the spy Jim Prideaux. Each man is haunted in a way by his professional past. And each becomes the project of a boy with problems who has developed the skills of a "watcher." Mr. Le Carre's watcher, famously, is Roach, one of the boys at the school where Prideaux is filling in as a teacher. Mr. Silva's is Peel, who lives with his mother and her beastly lover near the house Allon has taken in Cornwall. Prideaux and Allon notice and appreciate the nascent espionage skills of the boys. Later in each book, another mysterious person -- an older man -- fatefully visits the stranger. In "The Kill Artist," it is the legendary spy master Ari Shamron, and of course in "Tinker, Tailor," it is the rumpled, brilliant, legendary spy master George Smiley.
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LibraryThing member ZoharLaor
"The Kill Artist" tells the story of Gabriel Alon, a former Israeli agent who has retired to a life of an art restorer, his former cover which became his occupation. Alon is called back for duty one last time to stop an old enemy who is on a murderous spree before he leaves this world. The story
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takes place in Europe, US, Canada and Israel and has many twists and turns where no character is left unharmed.

The book if an easy read, fast and a page turner even though somewhat predictable, yet it does have its surprises. The author does try to present several sides of the mid-East issues but doesn't delve into any issues of take sides (almost a bullet point presentation summed up in a few paragraphs). There are no "good" or "bad" guys in this book, which is one reason I liked it, the Israelis fight with the same immoral conviction as their Palestinian counterparts - and both believe they are right an stand on a higher moral ground than their opponent.

The characters in the book are somewhat cliché, a supermodel spy who is used to entice enemies, a tortured reluctant hero, an enemy who feels justified, SOB directors and more.

It is a well written spy novel, filled with details in all the right places as well as several characters from Silva's previous novels and wonderful political popcorn for those of us that care. I am looking forward to reading the rest of the series.
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LibraryThing member chinquapin
Chronologically, this is the first of the Gabriel Allon spy novels. When the book opens, Gabriel is a retired Israeli agent and living in England, working peacefully as an art restorer on a work by Vecellio called Adoration of the Shepherd. Shamron, head of the Israeli intelligence network called
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The Office persuades him to come back to work for one last assignment, tracking down and killing the Islamic terrorist Tariq, who years before had killed Gabriel's young son and severely injured his wife. Tariq has killed the Israeli ambassador to the Netherlands and now has a plan to try and stop the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Gabriel works with a beautiful French model of Jewish origins to try and infiltrate into Tariq's network, which turns out to be a very dangerous game. Tariq learns that Gabriel is after him, and it becomes a race to see who can eliminate the other first.

This spy novel was definitely a page-turner. It had interesting characters, suspense, plenty of action, excellent pacing, and it was believable. It even had an art connection, a plus for me. I enjoyed it and look forward to reading the next one in the series.
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LibraryThing member ashergabbay
"The Kill Artist" is the first book in the Gabriel Allon series by Daniel Silva. Allon is a retired Mossad agent, spending his time restoring famous art paintings in a secluded house in southern England. His former boss turns up one day with an offer Allon can't refuse: join him in hunting down and
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killing Tariq al-Hourani, the Palestinian terrorist responsible for killing Allon's son and seriously wounding his wife. This is a great spy novel, a fast read.
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LibraryThing member skinglist
I liked this book, it was a good introduction to Gabriel Allon and Ari. It's interesting to see Ari's worries about why people are hesitant to return and what makes him tick. Gabriel as well, although I knew some of this from reading books further in the series. As always, a good Silva read.
LibraryThing member reading_fox
A fairly average thriller that starts off well with an unusual premise, but fails to hold it all the way through.

Gabriel Allon was a stellar member of Israel's fabelled intelligence service Mossad. When his wife and daughter were the victims of a palastinian terrorist plot he retired and took up
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the descrete profession as an art restorer - not something that you'd have thought he'd have had time to learn properly. However with the servive's reputation in tatters, he is called back "one last time" to salvage their respect, and maybe settle old debts at the same time. His sole aid is a disenchanted beautiful, young but aging, model. Who, in one of the more unbelivable parts, suddenly finds how to fire pistols with extreme accuracy after many years without even holding one! - unlike every other professional sharpshooter.

It's the details and belivability that turn a good book into a great one. And while this is well written and holds the interest, the details just don't quite work. The style is slightly faster than le Carre's Smilely era, but the general air is similar. The author does well in not getting too bogged down in the complex politics of Israel and Palastine, and sympathy can be found for both causes.

Readable, but nothing special. Seems a poor hook for a series.

I fyou wish to comment on this review please feel free to do so either on my profile or in the Review Discussions group - Here
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LibraryThing member barriesegall
A little slow at times but solid. Well worth the read. Waiting to go through the rest of the series.
LibraryThing member zweven
An introduction to the Gabriel Allon series, I enjoyed the storyline very much. I found it hard to keep up with the ever growing cast of characters, but perhaps that is the case with the genre. Fast paced page turner, will read the next in series, as most say it gets better.
LibraryThing member LisaMaria_C
I think what may have killed this book for me was I read this just after reading John Le Carre's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold--and after having recently read Alan Furst and Eric Ambler while working through a recommendation list that included Silva among this number. I got spoiled and after
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reading the best in the espionage genre this struck me as nothing more than a generic pulp thriller with all the writing skill, complexity of characterization and plotting of a blow'm up rat-tat-tat of a popcorn chomping action adventure flick.

It doesn't help that in the first hundred or so pages Silva rotates the points of views so quickly. I didn't get invested enough in any character early on to really get hooked. This is supposedly the first in a series of novels about Gabriel Allon, an Israeli agent fighting terrorists. We're introduced to him only as "the restorer" and then as "the stranger" and it's quite a while before he's linked to Gabriel Allon who seems less a starring player as just one in an ensemble cast. His opponent "Tariq" is the usual cut-out cardboard Muslim terrorist--as quick to execute a lover or someone on his own side as the enemy and without remorse. The style is decent enough, but nothing in the novel raised this to anything memorable among the many "dicklit" thrillers that spend some time in the bestseller list.
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LibraryThing member ccrown
I could not put this book down and read it in one long, delicious whirlwind of a night. Took about 6 hours from mysterious start to sort-of-satisfying end. I've read other Gabriel Allon books - not in any sort of order, so going to the Kill Artist allowed me to find out how it all started. Some
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mysteries were resolved for me, some seem more elusive than ever. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and each of the books written by Daniel Silva that I've been lucky enough to read - I'm definitely going to spend time filling in the blanks.
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LibraryThing member buffalogr
Great book. The romantic entwinements combined with a counter terrorist theme, made the book a fine read. You gotta wonder if things like that happen all the time? :-) Well written and read; hard to put down.
LibraryThing member majkia
Gabriel Allon is a former spy. But he's lured back into the game by the chance to kill the terrorist who blew up his wife and child. Problem is that things in the spy business, as in life, aren't always what they appear to be. He's about to be reminded of that. Again.

Characters well-drawn, twists
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and surprises, especially the ending!

I'll definitely be continuing this series.

I listened to the audio edition and it has an excellent narrator.
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LibraryThing member cjordan916
In this book, Gabriel, a former assassin for Israel's foreign intelligence service, the Mossad (which translates into English as "The Institution") retired after the murders of his wife and son to lead a quiet life as an art restorer, one who fixes the wounded past. Gabriel's ex-boss, Ari Shamron,
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an Israeli spymaster a la George Smiley but more treacherous, convinces Gabriel to leave his sheltered hermitage to hunt down Tariq, the assassin who killed Gabriel's family, before he can kill again. In an exquisitely wrought plot of treachery and counter-treachery, Silva explores the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from many, many angles.
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LibraryThing member NPJacobsen
I have had this book on my shelf for some time now and decided to see for myself if Daniel Silva's Israeli assassin, Gabriel Allon, was as good as I have heard. I can honestly say that Gabriel did not fit into my image of an assassin.

As the story begins, a mysterious stranger moves into a old
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cottage in an isolated English village, Port Navas Cornwall. The first chapter is told from the viewpoint of Peel, a boy of around 10, who had also recently moved to the village with his mother. Therefore, it takes several chapters to find out the stranger is Gabriel Allon.

Gabriel was a world renowned art restorer, the cover job he had in order to hide the fact that he worked for the Israeli intelligence service. However, he "retired" from the clandestine service nearly 10 years previously when a terrorist he was contracted to take out placed a bomb under his car, killing his son and turning his wife into an empty shell. After that, Gabriel went into a self imposed exile and immersed himself into restoring paintings in the hope of forgetting the past.

Then the Israeli ambassador and his wife are killed by terrorists in Paris, and Ari Shamron, head of the intelligence service, discovers the assassin was none other than Tariq, the Palestinian who destroyed Gabriel's family. Shamron trusts no one, and secretly goes to England to bring Gabriel back for one more mission. Gabriel can not refuse, even though he knows killing Tariq will not bring his family back.

In other novels featuring assassins, they tend to be cold and calculating, justifying their actions by believing the target deserved to die for their transgressions. Gabriel, however, has flashbacks and feels guilty for what he has done. Benjamin Stone, a wealthy backer of the Israeli operation, describes Gabriel as "an assassin with a conscience."

Given all the baggage Gabriel is carrying around, I had my doubts as to whether he would be an effective assassin. Add in the fact that he has been inactive for nearly 10 years and he was at a distinct disadvantage.

I thought the book started out slowly, but it gradually picked up its pace before finally reaching its climax. But even after the climax, there were more plot twists which tied the story into a neat little ball. Gabriel seemed to enjoy restoring paintings much more than his other line of work. Therefor, this is not the typical testosterone filled prose that one would associate with a story about an assassin, but rather paints a softer, more human side of the occupation.

There are several more books in the series, so I am anxious to find out what would bring him out of retirement again.
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LibraryThing member ecw0647
The methodology of the art restoration expert is the same as that of the professional assassin: “study the target, become like him, do the job, slip away without a trace.” Just as retired Israeli agent Gabriel Allon must study the artist Vecellio in order to resurrect and restore The Adoration
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of the Shepherd, to make the painting just like the original so he must study again the work of his old nemesis Tariq, agent of the PLO wing that is angry and upset with Arafat’s peace initiatives. Tariq is also responsible for the death of Gabriel's wife and child, so Ari Shamron tries to induce Gabriel out of retirement to track down and kill Tariq after Tariq’s organization has assassinated the Israeli ambassador in Paris. In these days after the end of the Cold War, writers of spy thrillers have been left with few international conflicts and adversaries with which to ground their novels. Silva has become one of the more successful, and this one is a real pageturner. Tariq learns from an inside source that Gabriel is after him, so it becomes a cat-andmouse game to see who can find and eliminate the other first.
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LibraryThing member rwt42
A new author to me. Quite a skilled writer. And I enjoyed the novel more than I expected. One comes to expect thriller characters and plots to be like peas in a pod from one author to the next. Unavoidable perhaps but Silva managed to stand out so i will be back.
LibraryThing member Jiraiya
After completing The Kill Artist I felt lifeless, and drained. Which is quite unusual for me. Another uncanny thing about this book is that it established a blistering 5/5 average rating right from the start. In this book it is 90% clear who we are supposed to side with. More unusual aspects of
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this unusual book is that the seemingly condemned character doesn't die. Also the hero doesn't perform much in the vicinity of heroics. I felt sad after reading The Kill Artist. I should not. The book wasn't geared for that. It's a freaking thriller. But below the exciting surface, there's the stirrings of unhappiness, sad endings, forsaken dreams, and moral meanderings.
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LibraryThing member CMBlaker
Great suspense thriller! Our cousin Chris recommended Daniel Silva to me two years ago at a family reunion on the Jersey shore. I just found the note I wrote it down on! And, boy, am I glad I did!! Fast paced, intelligent, & informative all at once! With an imperfect hero you can't help rooting
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for.
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LibraryThing member nbmars
A friend of mine loaned me this book saying that the principal character, Gabriel Allon, was “the Israeli James Bond,” but Gabriel Allon seems to me to be an even more unbelievable character. Allon, besides being a super spy, is also one of the world’s five top art restorers, a single-handed
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(“expert”) sailor of a two-masted ketch, an opera lover, a skilled auto mechanic (old MG), and a biblical expert. In addition, he speaks “flawless” Arabic, whereas all the Arabs in the book speak it with some kind of recognizable national accent. Even when building a fire, “[h]e seemed capable of holding the hot wood for a long time without discomfort.” Sure.

I like to suspend belief a little when I read an adventure story, but Silva’s characters are just over the top. Tariq, the villain, takes five days to escape from Paris to Samos after an assassination, but on the way he manages to seduce three different women, driving all of them to multiple orgasms, needless to say.

The main female character, madly in love with Allon, is a super model of course. She “worked with good looking men every day in her overt life, but there was something about Gabriel that took her breath away….She decided she was going to make love to this man before the operation was over.” Naturally, how could it be otherwise?

The story takes place amid the interminable Arab-Israeli conflict, and the author gives both sides plenty of reasons to hate each other. Nonetheless, there can be no doubt that Silva’s sympathies lie with the Israelis. He has concocted a fast-paced narrative, and he even throws in a twist in the plot at the end. In the hands of a better writer, a twist is used to explain a factual anomaly in the main plot. Silva’s plot twist, however, is somewhat gratuitous in that it comes in after all the action has been resolved and isn’t necessary to make the rest of the story more believable. I guess it was an attempt at irony.

In short, I found this book too cartoonish.

(JAB)
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LibraryThing member miyurose
Super, super book. I've been listening to this in the car, and at first I was a bit concerned that I wasn't going to like it. It took me a few hours to get through the set-up. However, once the "action" started, I was hooked. Gabriel is the moodiest spy you'll ever fall in love with, and I hope
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there is more of Jacqueline later in this series. The information about the Israel/Palestine conflict is as timely as ever. If you like espionage, intrigue, and international politics, you must give this a try.
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LibraryThing member utbw42
Ok, now I am officially addicted to Daniel Silva books. Gabriel Allon is a character that possesses many interesting possibilites in the future. Really enjoyed this one.
LibraryThing member Condorena
Spy thriller, very violent and terrifying but also sad.
LibraryThing member labfs39
Gabriel Allon is a reclusive high-end art restorer living in Cornwall. He's also a retired assassin for the Israeli counterintelligence security division. When an Israeli diplomat and his wife are killed in Paris, the division chief seeks Gabriel out for one more mission. Jacqueline Delacroix, née
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Sarah Halévy, is a beautiful French model, who does occasional work for The Office. She and Gabriel had worked on a job in the past, and he calls on her to help him once again. Together they seek to take down a deadly Palestinian terrorist.

I wanted to like this espionage tale more than I did. At first I was turned off by the descriptions of women only by their physical characteristics. Yes, women have breasts. Then it seemed to be setting up the only good Palestinian is a dead Palestinian, who is inevitably a terrorist, trope. As the book progressed, it did get into the Nakba or Catastrophe and a slightly more complex picture of the situation, but not enough to satisfy this reader.
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Language

Original publication date

2000

ISBN

9781440627903

Local notes

Donated by : Leonie Webb, January 2019.
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