The English Spy

The target is royal. The game is revenge. Stretched topless upon the foredeck, drink in hand, her flawless skin baking in the sun, was the most famous woman in the world. And one deck below, preparing an appetizer of tuna tartare, cucumber, and pineapple, was the man who was going to kill her. . . . She is an iconic member of the British Royal Family, beloved for her beauty and charitable works, resented by her former husband and his mother, the Queen of England. But when a bomb explodes aboard her holiday yacht, British intelligence turns to one man to track down her killer: legendary spy and assassin Gabriel Allon. Gabriel’s target is Eamon Quinn, a master bomb maker and mercenary of death who sells his services to the highest bidder. Quinn is an elusive man of the shadows—”a whisper in a half-lit chapel, a loose thread at the hem of a discarded garment”—but fortunately Gabriel does not pursue him alone. At his side is Christopher Keller, a British commando turned professional assassin who knows Quinn’s murderous handiwork all too well. The English Spy moves at light speed from the glamorous island of Saint Barthélemy to the mean streets of West Belfast to a cottage atop the cliffs of Cornwall that Gabriel holds dear. And though he does not realize it, he is stalking an old enemy—a cabal of evil that wants nothing more than to see him dead. Gabriel will find it necessary to oblige them, for when a man is out for vengeance, death has its distinct advantages. Filled with breathtaking twists, The English Spy will hold readers spellbound from its riveting opening passages to its heart-stopping conclusion. It is a timely reminder that there are some men in the world who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. And it proves once again why Daniel Silva is regarded as his generation’s finest writer of international thrillers.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.