Book review - "The Mozart Score" by Edwin Leather

I remember reading The Mozart Score by Edwin Leather years ago so when I saw it in a used book store, I picked it up to re-read it but I didn’t recall any of the story.

First, I’ll say that I did enjoy reading it again.  It’s a sort of a spy novel but without the undercover antics and intelligence as in Daniel Silva or Brad Thor.  The story centers on the kidnapping of an Israeli scientist Karl Reuben by Arab terrorists.  Did I mention this was published in 1977?  This takes place before the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union.  Soviet bloc countries are still shrouded in secrecy and distrust of everyone.  Rupert Conway is an art dealer in Vienna and gets involved in the search for the scientist, since Conway is a friend of Rueben’s father.  The search takes them across Austria, Yugoslavia and Albania.

Second, the story was exciting for most of it, but the ultimate climax was rather disappointing.

Third, his writing, although full of rich details of the country and cities in southeast Europe, breaks the cardinal rule of showing rather than telling.  The omniscient narrator is pervasive throughout the story.  It made the head hops not nearly as distracting as in previous novels. 

Fourth, the opening scene in which a man is murdered during a Mozart performance in Vienna is not resolved until the last page, literally, and it seems almost an afterthought, as if Leather realized he hadn’t addressed it since the second chapter. 

Lastly, the Mozart score in the novel has nothing to do with the novel.

Leather also wrote a book The Vienna Elephant but I don’t think I’ll read it.

Two 𝅘𝅥𝅮 out of five.

Book review - "The Heist" by Daniel Silva

Might contain spoilers.

Silva is never one to give the reader a break.  He starts his novel The Heist with a scene that seems innocent enough (unless you’ve read some of his other works), but within a few paragraphs has you devouring each page while taking you on a wild ride through Europe, the Middle East and all the art museums in between.

The Heist opens with the brutal murder of an art thief, so naturally Israeli spy extraordinaire and master classic art restorer Gabriel Allon is taxed with finding out who killed him.  And where are the paintings he stole?

The title refers to Allon staging a theft of a Van Gogh from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.  He creates an exact replica of the painting and puts it on the black market to flesh out the murderer.

Of course, Silva doesn’t stick with a mere art thief and a couple of murders.  Soon, Allon and his team uncover huge sums of money generated from the theft, trafficking and selling of priceless pieces of art.  Billions of dollars are hidden in bank accounts all over the globe to keep a tyrannical regime in power, and rolling in the dough while keeping its citizens in poverty and oppressed by the military.

Although a great story, I felt it wasn’t as good as some of his previous works.  The final solution is a little disappointing but I suppose we can’t become complacent.  There is still an element of satisfaction that the little fish didn’t get away, even if the big fish does.

I enjoy Silva’s work even though he violates writers’ rules against adding data dumps, however, interesting and the intrusive narrator.  He keeps his stories fast passed despite these sins(?).

3 ✪✪✪ out of 5

Review of Portrait of a Spy by Daniel Silva

For decades, I read mysteries and science fiction novels almost exclusively, with an occasional history non-fiction title thrown in there, but in the past year or so I’ve become a big fan of spy stories. After reading, Daniel Silva’s The Defector, I’ve been hooked. I picked a Portrait of a Spy without hesitation but waited until my novel Invisible Curtain was complete and released.


I mentioned in an earlier post how great minds think alike. The synopsis on the jacket of Portrait said Gabriel Allon, Silva’s spy, investigates bombs in London, Copenhagen and Paris, while my character, psionic detective Corey Shaw investigates bombs in London, Copenhagen and St. Petersburg. Wow! That was enough to hook me even if I hadn’t read the previous two novels by Silva.  It appears we came up with similar plot points at the same time!

In Portrait, Gabriel is enjoying his retirement on the rainy cliffs of Cornwall with his beautiful wife Chiara, doing nothing more than restoring paintings of the Great Masters. A routine trip to London takes a horrible turn as Gabriel witnesses a suicide bomber kill eighteen people and wound many more, a tragedy he could’ve prevented. Hopelessly entangled in the investigation into the terrorist acts, Gabriel assembles a team from the Israeli secret ops and reluctantly, the CIA. His plan: buy a terrorist cell.

A charismatic Muslim cleric, recruited by the CIA, has switched sides and is recruiting terrorists instead of spying on them. The CIA wants him to go away. Permanently.

Gabriel, through a series of meticulously planned steps approaches the ultra-wealthy daughter of a terrorist he killed several years ago. He takes a gamble that she will not follow in her father’s footsteps and will work with them to bring down a big embarrassment to the CIA and avenge the deaths in Europe, as well as strike a blow to the terrorist network her father developed.

His gamble pays off. Nadia is rich, powerful and smart and agrees to help Allon, not for Israel or the US, but to bring about an end to the oppression of women in her country. Despite her wealth, even she must obey the strict rules levied against women in the Middle East.

Much of the story is the seduction and preparation of Nadia to enter the world of global terrorism. I found it difficult to follow Allon’s plan in some areas, where it seemed the story contradicted itself. Still I found it to be an engaging, captivating story filled with great spy techniques with covert listening devices, devices to befuddle listening devices, surveillance and secret messages.

Silva brings so many minute and vivid details to each of his novels to give the reader the feeling they are standing in the middle of the desert with Allon, or holed up in a safe house in DC with his team.

The exciting page-turning climax in the desert with Allon, Nadia and a multitude of surprises and twists gave me sweaty palms as I gripped the book tightly. I can’t wait for the next novel.

Great Minds Think Alike (I hope!)

I became a fan of Daniel Silva over night (literally) when I read The Defector in two days. When he released The Rembrandt Affair, I snatched it up, but didn’t read it until just recently. So I was excited when I saw his latest work, The Portrait of a Spy. It was an easy decision to buy it.

Then I read the inside jacket.

In Portrait, Silva’s protagonist Gabriel Allon investigates bombings in London, Copenhagen and Paris. I’m working on the finishing touches on the third Corey Shaw mystery, Invisible Curtain, in which he investigates bombings in London, Copenhagen and St. Petersburg. I haven’t read Silva’s latest (until after Curtain is finished) but I’m sure the similarities between the books end there.

Allon is an ex-assassin, formerly of the Israeli Secret Intelligence. He wants nothing more than to live out his years quietly with his beautiful wife Chiara in Cornwall and restore valuable works of art. He’s come out of retirement almost as many times as Brett Favre as Israel still needs his skills.

Corey Shaw is a native of Massachusetts, trained to develop paranormal abilities such as clairvoyance and telepathy. He is still searching for Mr. Right, but having a good time with all the Mr. Wrongs for the time being.

I have no idea how Mr. Silva devises the premises for his stories, but I rely on the Agatha Christie method: wherever I travel, I use that location as a setting for a mystery/story. Last year, I went on a cruise through the Baltic Sea with my family to celebrate my parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. In Invisible Curtain, Corey is on a cruise through the Baltic Sea with his family to celebrate his mother’s seventieth birthday. This story has been in the works for over a year. I’ve gone from unemployed, to employed, back to unemployed in that time frame.

I’m sure that Mr. Silva, a New York Times best-selling author, won’t think I’ve copied his ideas. But if I came up with a chain of events similar to one he did, I must be on the right track.

The Rembrandt Affair by Daniel Silva

I hadn’t been a big fan of spy novels but I had never read one by Daniel Silva. After reading The Defector (and loved it), I snatched up The Rembrandt Affair and read it…nay, devoured it in two days. It is a gripping edge-of-your-seat ride.

What sets Silva apart is his meticulous attention to detail in describing things and places the average mortal may never see. He states that it is a work of fiction but he forces you to believe it. I don’t know if the CIA actually has an underground facility below Grosvenor Square in London but the manner in which Silva describes it so vividly, I’m convinced there is.

His main character Gabriel Allon, former agent and assassin of the Israeli secret intelligence, wants nothing more than to retire to the cliffs of Cornwall and live peacefully with his beautiful wife and restore priceless works of art. That plan is shattered when an old friend comes calling, begging him to retrieve a stolen Rembrandt. Gabriel cannot resist the opportunity to rescue a painting from one of the Masters.

His investigation into the painting’s provenance reveals it was ‘bought’ by a high ranking Nazi officer during the occupation of Amsterdam. From there, the story delves into the atrocious crimes committed by the Third Reich and the sizeable fortunes of the Jews that disappeared during the Second World War along with their owners. Allon’s path crosses those of two men, each of whom had a father with activities of horrific distinction during the war. One is trying to distance himself from his father’s atrocities. The other is capitalizing on his.

But what horrifies Allon the most is the vast wealth of the Holocaust victims being used to fortify a country bent on creating a second holocaust with nuclear weapons.

As with The Defector, Silva spins a mesmerizing tale that involves the top secret intelligence agencies of several nations and their complicated interaction and cooperation. Or lack thereof. How much of it is fact and which is fiction? The secret agent stuff makes for an awesome read and The Rembrandt Affair is a must-read.

The Defector by Daniel Silva

Daniel Silva starts The Defector with the best first sentence hook I’ve ever read: “Pyotr Luzkhov was about to be killed and for that he was grateful.” This starts an action-packed, page-turning spy thriller. The Associated Press called it the perfect book for fans of well-crafted thrillers, which is a pretty big compliment but The Defector delivers. It hooks the reader in from the first sentence and doesn’t leg to until the last.

Silva’s main character Gabriel Allon is an Israeli spy/assassin, who’s enjoying solitude with his wife and restoring painting masterpieces for the Vatican. He once made a promise to a colleague and friend Grigori Bulganov, a Russian spy who once saved Gabriel’s life. He promised Bulganov not to let him be killed and buried in an unmarked grave.

Now the Russian has disappeared several years after defecting to England. The British Government thinks he’s re-defected back to Russia but Gabriel knows better. Grigori would never return to his home country for fear of being killed the moment he set foot on Russian soil. Gabriel gathers a multi-national team of operatives to find Grigori and punish the ones responsible for his abduction.

As they bounce around the world, money is no object and the players in the game involve the highest levels of government in Washington, DC, London, Tel Aviv and the Kremlin. The further Gabriel goes to find his friend, he realizes that he may lose much more.

Silva has a great knack to pull you into a story and make you feel and empathize with the characters. Gabriel Allon seems to be a bit cliché, an assassin with a heart of gold, but Silva doesn’t sugarcoat anyone. No one is innocent. Still you’re drawn into their stories and connect with them. He makes it easy to know who to cheer for.

Silva doesn’t include many Americans in this novel. In fact, only two have important roles but remain secondary characters. He even takes a couple of pot shots at Americans. However, it seems he’s laughing with us, not at us. Hmm….

This is the first novel I’ve read by Daniel Silva and it has wet my appetite for more of his works. Its breath-taking pace doesn’t leave the reader out of breath or out of touch. It soars but remains grounded without becoming so far-fetched the readers are reminded they’re reading a work of fiction.

Read the first page of The Defector and then hang on. You’ll want to read it in one sitting.