Silva’s fourth nov­el in the Allon series, Prince of Fire begins with a truck bomb at the Israeli embassy in Rome, leav­ing more than 50 peo­ple dead. Inves­ti­gat­ing whether the truck bomb is con­nect­ed to the bomb­ings of the Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ter in Buenos Aires, Sil­va takes his read­er on a jour­ney through the streets of Italy and Israel in an attempt to solve this case. We meet Ari Sham­ron, now 75, a wise and aged gen­tle­man who once head­ed Israel’s secret ser­vice and was Allon’s men­tor. Weav­ing fact with fic­tion, Sil­va presents a sus­pense­ful nov­el for those who long for a polit­i­cal spy thriller and an under­stand­ing of Mid­dle East issues. His char­ac­ters are provoca­tive, often flawed, as they shift through their coun­tries and impact upon one anoth­er in an attempt to deal with racism, xeno­pho­bia and geno­cide as they exist today. Although it is well writ­ten, I found the book often slow and some­what con­fus­ing for those with no expo­sure to Silva’s oth­er nov­els. Nev­er­the­less, his char­ac­ters are believ­able, brought to life by Silva’s eye for detail.