In this sixth book of the Gabriel Allon spy series, we read about sui­cide bombers attack­ing the Vat­i­can, al Qae­da and Saudi/​American polit­i­cal rela­tions, the CIA and the Israeli secret ser­vice. But this is no ordi­nary spy thriller, as Daniel Sil­va writes well, research­es in depth and edu­cates the read­er in anoth­er heart-stop­ping sto­ry that includes Jew­ish his­to­ry, cur­rent events and polit­i­cal intrigue while weav­ing in art his­to­ry and art restora­tion. The Mes­sen­ger is so real­is­tic that it’s hard to believe that today’s break­ing news reports are not a con­tin­u­a­tion of the book’s events.

As an avid fan of this series, I was lucky to meet Sil­va at a lunchtime book talk at the New York Pub­lic Library recent­ly. He has a seri­ous, intel­li­gent, well­groomed pres­ence like Gabriel Allon, and has been told they are more alike than he knows. He said when writ­ing the series, Allon’s eyes are his eyes, and Allon’s view­point is his. Sil­va says he works at a steady clip, sev­en days a week, liv­ing a monas­tic and rig­or­ous sched­ule when work­ing to pro­duce his best-sell­ing books. He finds tak­ing a day off dur­ing the five to six month process to be trau­mat­ic. Sil­va calls him­self a library rat, research­ing his sub­jects thor­ough­ly and writ­ing in a ​“staid and struc­tured way, pre­fer­ring com­plete sen­tences includ­ing a noun and verb and no foul lan­guage,” unlike some con­tem­po­rary spy fic­tion writ­ers. Some­times real life events have over­lapped with Silva’s fic­tion, caus­ing him to ​“catch his­to­ry in the act” as when Yasir Arafat died while he was writ­ing Prince of Fire. He ​“uses fact as a foun­da­tion, then leads the read­er through a door­way into his fic­tion­al world.” He said that Gabriel’s work with old mas­ter paint­ings brings in the beau­ty of restora­tion work in sharp con­trast to his occu­pa­tion as spymaster/​assassin. The author said that Allon has grown more pes­simistic since the col­lapse of the Oslo accords and 9/11. Sil­va says he wouldn’t want to hang out with Allon because he makes peo­ple uncom­fort­able and has a touch of melan­choly and some neu­roses. A fan told Sil­va that she was sure he was a child of Holo­caust sur­vivors since in her view as a sec­ond gen­er­a­tion sur­vivor, he has cap­tured the dynam­ics eeri­ly well. The fic­tion­al Allon is the son of a sur­vivor and refers through­out the series to his mother’s expe­ri­ences at the hands of the Nazis in chill­ing detail. I told Daniel Sil­va that I believe he’s great ​“P.R.” for Israel, edu­cat­ing the pub­lic about cur­rent events and back­ground. Although he would not own up to that role, I sensed agree­ment in the faces of the diverse crowd who came to meet him. Sil­va said he is nev­er bored with Gabriel Allon and that his next nov­el will, with­out a doubt, fea­ture this fic­tion­al char­ac­ter. Although the sub­ject mat­ter and pace of the Allon series keeps fans up all night, Silva’s read­ers eager­ly await the next installment.