3.5 starsMulti-lingual Israeli spy/art restorer Gabriel Allon is restoring a painting in Venice when a bomb destroys the 'Wartime Claims and Inquiries Office' in Vienna, Austria. Gabriel's friend Eli Lavon is badly wounded and Eli's staff is killed. When Gabriel travels to Vienna to investigate he meets an elderly Holocaust survivor who claims that a prominent, wealthy, local businessman - Ludwig Vogel - is really a Nazi war criminal named Erich Radek.Before long the elderly Holocaust survivor is murdered and Gabriel's further inquiries - which require trips to the Vatican and Argentina - seem to confirm that Vogel is indeed Radek. Gabriel suspects that the bombing and murder were perpetrated to prevent Vogel/Radek from being exposed - and there's a little side-story associated with this presumption. Along the way Gabriel learns more about his mother, a Holocaust survivor who's been very reluctant to speak about her wartime experiences. This makes Gabriel even more determined to bring Radek to justice. During Gabriel's travels there are several attempts on his life but none are successful due to a little help from his friends. These various friends also help Daniel hatch up a complex scheme to snatch Radek, and this leads to the book's dramatic climax. As usual in Daniel Silva's writing, the book has a political bent. In this story, the Vatican, the Catholic Church, and Pope Pius XII are depicted as having collaborated with the Nazis and having helped war criminals escape. Also, Austria is described as having been sympathetic to the Nazis, with people willing to run concentration camps and cover up war crimes. FYI: The parts of the book that described Nazi treatment of the Jews are graphic and disturbing.There are an array of interesting characters in this thriller, including Gabriel's art mentor, his girlfriend, a clock restorer/assassin, residents of the Vatican, members of Israeli's intelligence service, and more. The story is fast-paced with plenty of action, but there aren't a lot of twists. Spy thrillers aren't my favorite genre but I enjoyed the book. Recommended for thriller fans.
I listened to this book on a long road trip. This tale of espionage was very fast moving, as well as being just long enough to engage me, the listener without exhausting me. The reader was good and it truly held my interest while keeping my eyes alert and on the road. While it was not rocket science, it did provide a history of parts of the Holocaust, never actually getting into the weeds, just imparting the information necessary for the story to take shape. It basically begins with an explosion that takes the life of two young employees working for an office investigating Holocaust crimes and seriously injuring the elderly man who runs it. Apparently a Nazi murderer has been discovered in Vienna, living a very fruitful and successful life, gleaning much respect from those with whom he is in contact because of his position. This explosion starts a pattern of violence as this Nazi seeks to protect his hidden identity from discovery. Who was this Nazi murderer? Where did he do his dastardly deeds? Why is he going to such lengths, now, in his old age, to prevent his discovery? These secrets are revealed in the book as the CIA and Israeli Spy network work to find out the secrets behind the bloodshed. It takes place in several countries, America, Israel, Austria, Italy and Argentina. As our heroes and villains move from place to place, the story gets more and more exciting, the secrets more and more perplexing. Underlying the political intrigue, there is also a tragic story of loss and a current story of love. This is book four in the Gabriel Allon series of which there are several.
What do You think about A Death In Vienna (2005)?
Gabriel Allon is back and fighting Nazis in Austria, who are alive and well and active (albeit very old). Still, an OK entry in the series. Silva seems to be painting countries' personalities -- mostly Austria, in this case -- with a pretty broad brush, but I don't really know enough about European politics to know what is more or less accurate or evocative and which is dramatic license.One odd thing I notice about these books, considering they were written in the early 2000s, at least this one was, I get a sense that they should take place in the 90s or even the 80s. Judging by the timeline, Allon should be in his 50s (and his girlfriends seem to be half his age) yet he still bounces around like a kid. And hardly anyone has or uses a cell phone. Which is weird for the 21st century. Cell phones and email show up when they're needed to move the story ahead to a certain degree and then they disappear. It's not a huge problem, but it just feels kind of ... off.
—Mike
#4 in the Gabriel Allon series--audio book. Gabriel is sent to Vienna to discover the truth behind a bombing which killed an old friend, but while there he encounters something that turns his world upside down. It is a face - a face that feels hauntingly familiar, yet chills him to the bone and sends him on an urgent hunt for a name, a history, a connection. Gabriel Allon is working as an art restoration expert in Venice. His old boss from the Israeli Intelligence Service, Ari Shamron, appears one day with devastating news about an explosion in Vienna. Gabriel is not anxious to go back to the city where his wife and son had been victims of a car bomb in 1991. However, Shamron persuades him to return to this "forbidden city" to investigate the bombing of the Wartime Claims and Inquiries Office, which left two young women dead and an old friend, Eli Lavon, in a coma.Gabriel soon learns that a man named Max Klein had set the events in motion that may have led to the bombing. Klein had once been a violinist in the Auschwitz camp orchestra and he had a particularly vivid memory of a Nazi named Erich Radek. In front of Klein, Radek once killed fifteen concentration camp prisoners in cold blood when they could not correctly identify a musical piece by Brahms. Many years later, Klein spots this same war criminal placidly having coffee in a Viennese café, and he reports what he has seen to Eli Lavon, who then begins to make the inquiries that almost cost him his life. Gabriel's investigation leads him to make some horrifying discoveries, the most painful one being the heart-rending story of his mother's two years of hell as an inmate of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
—Pat
My fourth Gabriel Allon in a row, and I could go on forever but I'm stopping to finish other books. I learn so much history and geography from Daniel Silva's books, and the characters are so well drawn that I find myself thinking about them all day and looking at life through their eyes, especially Gabriel's green eyes. The last three were about the Holocaust. Silva's copious research into the involvement of Austria, Switzerland, and the Roman Catholic church formed the basis of these compelling novels.
—Rchalk1
