THE OTHER WOMAN by Daniel Silva
Each year one of the highlights of my summer is receiving a new novel by Daniel Silva. This year the novel is titled THE OTHER WOMAN and it is the eighteenth in the series of novels featuring Israeli intelligence agency chief Gabriel Allon. Loyal readers have been following this man’s adventures for such a long time he has become virtually a part of their family. Now Silva has returned to recount a new Allon adventure. Unfortunately this time it is long winded in its telling and the story is not that exciting.
There are several problems with this book and the first is that two thirds of the story is prologue. It takes forever to lay out the plot points that will be addressed in the last third of the story. We learn of a possible mole in one of the intelligence agencies of a free world country. There is a scramble to pin this information down and Allon is of course in the midst of it. This calls for a few skirmishes and they are fairly exciting but they are all leading to the big payoff in the last chapters of the book.
We also do not learn anything new about Allon. Followers of this series have been aware of Allon’s character and his struggles for ages. As earlier stated this is the eighteenth novel in this series. In every story up to this one you got a few more personal details about Allon’s life and character. In this new book it is just Allon being a parft of the action with no new insights given.
To freshen it all up we could have perhaps been given more information and detail about Allon’s wife Chiara, or even his two kids. Anything new on a personal level would have been appreciated. But we get no new viewpoint on Chiara, the kids, any of Allon’s crew, or even on Allon’s mentor Ari Shamron.
Shamron was the former head of the Israeli Intelligence Agency. Upon his retirement he handpicked Allon to take his place. He has appeared in past novels and little bits of information about him and his relationship with Allon have been spread through the stories. In THE OTHER WOMAN Shamron has one meeting with Allon and it is much too brief and ultimately non-revealing of any new information.
The action kicks in as you start the last third of the book but it is too little too late. It is exciting to ferret out a mole and see what happens in the chase to get this mole exposed. However in this Silva story the reader is a distant observer of the action because the reader has not reconnected on a personal level with Allon and there has been much too little time spent on building up the personality of the mole and the mole’s victims.
Daniel Silva is a genius when it comes to writing stories of this type. His main character, Gabriel Allon, is one of the most endearing and inspiring heroes of modern literature. I will anxiously await the next story in the Gabriel Allon series and hope Silva gets back to the more personal elements of his story.
THE OTHER WOMAN is published by Harper. It contains 496 pages and sells for $28.99.
Jackie K Cooper
www.jackiekcooper.com
