Fic­tion

The Defec­tor

  • Review
By – December 22, 2011

The Defec­tor is the ninth in Daniel Silva’s excit­ing Gabriel Allon espi­onage series, which con­tin­ues to top the best­seller lists. This is the sequel to Sil­vas pre­vi­ous book, Moscow Rules, in which Allon, an Israeli Mossad spy, per­se­veres in bat­tling his ene­my, Ivan Kharkov, Russ­ian oli­garch and ille­gal arms deal­er, who is out for revenge. The KGB colonel con­tin­ues to endan­ger the West­ern world because Allon mis­tak­en­ly let him live. This is also a love sto­ry in which Allon, the charis­mat­ic art restor­er, is called away from his hon­ey­moon in Italy with his beau­ti­ful fel­low agent Chiara. Allon can opt to go into hid­ing in Israel, but his con­science won’t allow him to break a promise to a Russ­ian defec­tor who saved his life. Allon and his loy­al team of Israeli oper­a­tives, includ­ing his wife, get busy with the chase, which takes many unex­pect­ed twists.

The chap­ters move us quick­ly to Moscow and the Russ­ian for­est, Gene­va and Zurich, Paris, Lake Como and Umbria, Wash­ing­ton, D.C., the Adiron­dacks, Jerusalem and Tiberias, Oxford and the Russ­ian city some­times referred to as Lon­don,” where 200,000 Rus­sians live today.

Sil­va con­tin­ues to do seri­ous research to write about impor­tant, time­ly events and to edu­cate his read­ers about Jew­ish his­to­ry. This sto­ry, like his oth­ers, includes many strong female char­ac­ters and is intel­li­gent and well-written.

Miri­am Brad­man Abra­hams, mom, grand­mom, avid read­er, some­time writer, born in Havana, raised in Brook­lyn, resid­ing in Long Beach on Long Island. Long­time for­mer One Region One Book chair and JBC liai­son for Nas­sau Hadas­sah, cur­rent­ly pre­sent­ing Inci­dent at San Miguel with author AJ Sidran­sky who wrote the his­tor­i­cal fic­tion based on her Cuban Jew­ish refugee family’s expe­ri­ences dur­ing the rev­o­lu­tion. Flu­ent in Span­ish and Hebrew, cer­ti­fied hatha yoga instructor.

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