Silva's heart must be in the Middle East!

books:


	• Moscow Rules (Wheeler Large Print Book Series) Daniel Silva Gale Cengage, 2008 - 631 pages average customer review:based on 88 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Silva's heart must be in the Middle East!

I was so excited to read this book, but somehow it was tepid at best. Perhaps the push to publish novels each year means that even an author as good as Silva cannot keep up the quality. This book lacks passion, and on the Middle East and its horrid conflicts, he is always so very engaged and instructive. MOSCOW RULES is flat, and there is nothing in it that says the author really knows Russia. I have, however, loved all the other books starring Gabriel Allon. Perhaps the next one will return to form.

Exciting

As always, Danial Silva has written a very exciting and informative book. It fits in very well with todays intrigues and current evernts.
Well done!

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Cloying

I have read all of Daniel Silva's novels and I believe his first (The Unlikely Spy) remains his best crafted, plotted, and most complicated and intriguing novel. With the Allon series, Silva has turned into a formula writer relying on his stock material and common clichés. Silva uses an omniscient point of view and his shifts can occasionally be confusing. His dialogue is often unrealistic, as when a woman states to Allon, "I'm afraid I've yet to find a countryman suitable for marriage and procreation." Allon himself is not introspective or inwardly conflicted, so we're not sure what exactly motivates him to kill on behalf of his government. At the opening of this novel he is honeymooning with his wife in Italy as he restores a painting for the Vatican. Allon allegedly prefers this careful work to performing secret missions for the Israelis, but his actions speak otherwise when Shamron calls him to investigate a Russian arms trader. Allon's wife is relegated to a ridiculous cameo role as a stewardess as Allon jets to the US, Russian, and Israel in the course of his duties. The character of Sarah Bancroft from Virginia is brought in to show her smoldering lust for Allon, who continually disses her. She plays an insignificant role in the plot.

Due to the storyline's necessity to quickly impart information, Silva's authorial presence is often intrusive. Sometimes his writing is awkward, as when he has characters repeat such lines as "I grow radishes and carrots", and "We cannot live as normal people". These are fine, memorable lines that do not need to be restated within the same scene. Silva imputes omniscience to Allon, who apparently knows at all times who's following him. At one point, Allon "glanced over his shoulder" to spot "two aging mobsters and their high price professional dates." Quite often the author writes as if he is presumptively winking at his loyal, comfortable readers. Allon meets a man he mentally sizes up as "a worthy opponent" even before Allon knows if the man is there to help or hurt him. Silva presumes his readers have knowledge of Lubyanka, a prison in Russia, for he doesn't describe it, other than alluding to it as most terrifying place. The same foreknowledge applies to Shin Bet, and the "Sayeret Metkal special forces". Apparently invoking these names with the barest hint of dark intent as context is sufficient for most readers. Many acronyms are not spelled out at all, such as SVR, GID, PET, NSA, NSC, and RSVM.

Silva withholds information, even in the omniscient view, to string the reader along. For example, he has a character ask, "'Who is he?'" The next line is, "She said a name then picked up the wine list." The reader is left in the lurch. Of course, we keep reading to find out who it was.

There are many examples of poor logic. For example on one page (184), the author, in omniscient mode, reveals one of his characters, Boothby, "did not necessarily enjoy hearing about his father." The next page, Boothby says, "...perhaps I'm not as foxy or devious as my old father was." This is awkward prose, and would he really say this, even if he was comfortable talking of his father?

Some of the scenes are so outlandish as to be comic. In a meeting at the CIA in Langley, Allon demands of the CIA chief the NSA telephone communication intercepts (presumably available) of the antagonist, Ivan, a Russian arms broker. The chief responds those intercepts are highly classified, and furthermore such information cannot be turned over to a foreign intelligence service, as Allon works for Israel. Allon casually responds that he'll call someone in the Oval Office, if the chief won't turn over the intercepts. The chief responds:
"You wouldn't."
"In a heartbeat."
"I'll get the material released to you within twenty-four hours. What else do you need?"

A large amount of the plot is devoted to having Allon recreate a masterpiece of art in order to lure a Russian art aficionado, who happens to be the wife of Ivan the Russian arms broker, into a private conversation so that the Israelis can find where this arms broker stores his business transaction records. This elaborate, time consuming ruse is totally unnecessary, and feels fabricated. Allon apparently does not mind working on the forgery in lieu of his restoration project for the Vatican. The reader is left with the sense that all this plot development is wasted when Ivan's wife, upon examining the painting, immediately recognizes it as a forgery. Her quick insight, elaborated upon late in the novel, casts doubt upon Allon's ability in his avocation.

Later, Ivan's wife needs to get to Moscow to attend to her ill mother, or so she tells Ivan. Ivan first wants to send his wife to Moscow on his private jet. When he finds his jet is impounded, Ivan wants to send her on a commercial airline, but with two body-guards. There is no logic to this, for we are told Ivan has surveillance of the apartment of his wife's mother in Moscow, and presumably they should know if the woman is sick or not, not to mention the presence of bodyguards traveling with this woman is unnecessary. There are other examples of strained logic that I won't go into here.

In his first novel, Silva had many memorable characters, some quite complicated and engaging, in part because they were not larger than life. His current protagonist is weary of his roles. Allon, should be allowed to retire for a while so that the author can get out of his niche and stock plot formulae. I think Silva's descriptions, which can be vivid, have become more insipid with each of his novels, and his authorial presence more overbearing. And since Silva has ventured to Moscow, I must say that Martin Cruz Smith writes much better descriptions of the specific, often odd details of that locale, or indeed of any of the locales that Arkady Renko finds himself in.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

The extraordinary new Gabriel Allon novel from the ?gold standard? (The Dallas Morning News) of thriller writers.

Over the course of ten previous novels, Daniel Silva has established himself as one of the world?s finest writers of international intrigue and espionage? ?a worthy successor to such legends as Frederick Forsyth and John le Carré? (Chicago Sun-Times)?and Gabriel Allon as ?one of the most intriguing heroes of any thriller series? (The Philadelphia Inquirer).

Now the death of a journalist leads Allon to Russia, where he finds that, in terms of spycraft, even he has something to learn. He?s playing by Moscow rules now.

This is not the grim, gray Moscow of Soviet times but a new Moscow, awash in oil wealth and choked with bulletproof Bentleys. A Moscow where power resides once more behind the walls of the Kremlin and where critics of the ruling class are ruthlessly silenced. A Moscow where a new generation of Stalinists is plotting to reclaim an empire lost and to challenge the global dominance of its old enemy, the United States.

One such man is Ivan Kharkov, a former KGB colonel who built a global investment empire on the rubble of the Soviet Union. Hidden within that empire, however, is a more lucrative and deadly business: Kharkov is an arms dealer?and he is about to deliver Russia?s most sophisticated weapons to al- Qaeda. Unless Allon can learn the time and place of the delivery, the world will see the deadliest terror attacks since 9/11?and the clock is ticking fast.

Filled with rich prose and breathtaking turns of plot, Moscow Rules is at once superior entertainment and a searing cautionary tale about the new threats rising to the East?and Silva?s finest novel yet.

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