Type of bind: Paperback
Format: Bargain Price
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 400
Printing Date: February 01, 2005
Sale Popularity Level: 447831
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
The sins of the past reverberate into the present, in an extraordinary novel by the new master of international suspense.
It was an ordinary-looking photograph. Just the portrait of a man. But the very sight of it chilled Allon to the bone.
Art restorer and sometime spy Gabriel Allon is sent to Vienna to authenticate a painting, but the real object of his search becomes something else entirely: to find out the truth about the photograph that has turned his world upside down. It is the face of the unnamed man who brutalized his mother in the last days of World War II, during the Death March from Auschwitz. But is it really the same one? If so, who is he? How did he escape punishment? Where is he now?
Fueled by an intensity he has not felt in years, Allon cautiously begins to investigate; but with each layer that is stripped away, the greater the evil that is revealed, a web stretching across sixty years and thousands of lives. Soon, the quest for one monster becomes the quest for many. And the monsters are stirring...
Rich with sharply etched characters and prose, and a plot of astonishing intricacy, this is an uncommonly intelligent thriller by one of our very best writers.
Amazon.com Review:
Gabriel Allon hasn't been back to Vienna since his wife and child died there in a terrorist bombing. But when his mentor in the Israeli intelligence agency dispatches him to the Austrian capitol to investigate a murderous explosion at the Wartime Claims and Inquiry Office, his presence alerts the attention of police officials who have reasons to stand in the way of his investigation. When a concentration camp survivor is killed who could link the father of Austria's subsequent chancellour to Nazi atrocities and an ongoing coverup by the Catholic Church, Allon discovers another connection to the conspiracy, this one closer to his own past than he could ever have imagined. This is the third of Silva's thrillers featuring Allon, the art restorer who's also a spy (The Confessor and The English Assassin are the very first two). In an endnote, the author calls them a 'completed cycle dealing with the unfinished business of the Holocaust.' Allon is such a compelling hero that one hopes Silva, a skilled craftsman and a terrific story-teller, will bring him back in another series. --Jane Adams
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Rated by buyers 
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I have gained a an ever increasing respect for Holocaust survivors. I do not believe anyone can ever really begin to imagine the horrors of this period in history. Gabriel Allon learned of this very first hand upon reading a manuscript, written by his mother, who was a physical survivor. The monstor who stripped her of everything except her moral courage is alive and Gabriel must bring him to justice.
Another great read from Daniel Silva. 5 stars.
Rated by buyers 
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The book's hero is a former Israeli assassin presented by the author (pp. 269-70) as having led the Mossad operation to murder the Palestinian leader Khalil al-Wazir (nom de guerre Abu Jihad), which transpired in the country of Tunisia on April 16, 1988, in the presence of his wife and children. I wonder how many people reading the book assume this was a fictional event, part of the background story of the obviously fictional protagonist. Gabriel, our hero, seems to have completed that assignment with the usual Israeli efficiency - except for one thing. He stopped for a few seconds to "console" the wife and children of the man he had just murdered. I doubt the average reader will trouble his imagination by questioning how such a murder of a Palestinian could be justified. For Gabriel is seen as a "good" assassin. He condescended to console the wife and children. I was reminded for some reason of Golda Meir's statement ""I can forgive you [i.e. Arabs] for killing my boys, but I can never forgive you for making our boys kill yours." What a terrible tragedy for the Israelis, that despite all their natural goodness, they are forced, just forced, to murder Palestinians. Look, their assassin stopped to console the Palestinian's wife and children!
I read `A Death in Vienna' because a friend had recommended the author Daniel Silva. I chose this particular title randomly from several sitting on the shelf. My friend told me the hero's name is Gabriel Allon, and that he is an art restorer. Rather early in the book, I was tempted to stop reading. After a bombing in Vienna, the hero's Mossad superior refers to statements claiming responsibility as "the usual drivel about the plight of the Palestinians and the destruction of the Zionist entity" (p.22). But I didn't stop reading; I soldiered on to the end.
Is this book for you, or not for you? If you are among those willing to regard the plight of the Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis' as so much "drivel", then this book may be right up your alley. There's plenty of good times to be had, watching as the former Nazi is captured and brought back to Israel for punishment. It's true that the action is plodding and the suspense non-existent, but as one gentile reviewer said here on Amazon, "So sad, so sad. While reading this book, I cried and prayed for the Jewish people - 5 stars". Precisely one of the author's goals, I am quite sure.
If on the other hand, you are one who is aware of and disturbed by the plight of the Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis, then you may find the novel's glorification of the Mossad hit man to be, well, not something you can easily warm up to.
Rated by buyers -
Daniel Silva is a wonderful author. His books are hard to put down once you start reading one. His characters are full and extremely human-showing the best and the worst of humanity. Many of his books have the same characters but he makes it very easy to understand how they all fit together-in the past and in the time of the book. His assassins are even somewhat likeable because he gives the background showing why they became assassins. His books would make terrific movies. He better write another one fast because I only have a couple of his older ones to read before I will need more.
Rated by buyers -
Daniel Silva's Michner like ability to weave fact and fiction truly amazes me. The research he puts into his efforts combined with the twists and turns in his plots and his character development are all woven together to make for one hell of a fine read. Now that the holacost trilogy is finished, I can't wait to see what his future offering(s) will bring.
Rated by buyers -
I enjoyed the book as a novel, well worth the read. I enjoyed it even more for the background that it provides about the Holocaust. The presentation of this research material (historical material worked into the fabric of the story) provided an insight into this horrible series of atrocities that I never was able to appreciate prior to this reading. I have found this to be typical of Silva's work. His research is worked into the narrative in a manner that makes the historical aspect of the novel fascinating reading.
I grew up in an era in which I should have been well advised of the horrors of this part of our collective history (I was in my early teens during WW II), and although as a kid I was fully on board with the hatred of Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito, I never was told of these atrocities on the part of the Nazis except in the most sanitized manner. Silva makes it personal.
I have noted in his other works that he is careful to present the Palestinian side as well as the Jewish side of the MidEast conflict, and that is informative as well. But, in the case of the Nazi effort to eliminate the Jews, there is no rational "other side of the discussion", I am convinced.
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