El Confesor (The Confessor) Book

I don't normally go for thriller spycraft fiction, but I confess I am totally addicted to Silva's spy novels about an Israeli assassin/spy and part-time art restorer named Gabriel Allon. The first book was written in 2000 and the latest in 2012 and in that time span, Silva draws a geopolitical arc starting with Nazi wartime crimes and the complicity of the Vatican and the Swiss in Nazi wartime looting. Then to the Palestinian conflict, Black September and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. And after that, the end of the Cold War and the emergence of the Russian oligarchs. After that, 9/11, the war on terror, and the Arab Spring. Even the IRA had some chapters devoted to it. Probably the only incendiary current event not touched is North Korea, but that's because Gabriel Allon is a Europhile at heart.

I read all 12 books completely out of sequence but it wasn't a problem as each stood on its own. In fact, by reading the books completely out of order, I had the added pleasure of discovering the genesis of relationships between various characters after bonds were formed later on in the series.

Gabriel Allon is way sexier than James Bond.