The Kill Artist
The Kill Artist (Gabriel Allon #1)
By: Daniel Silva
[Fulfilled ‘Book published 25 years ago’ prompt as part of Shelf Reflection’s 2025 Reading Challenge]
“As always he was struck by the similarities between the craft of restoration and the craft of killing. The methodology was precisely the same: study the target, become like him, do the job, slip away without a trace.”
“We all leave behind bits of loose thread. Old operations, old enemies. They pull at you, like memories of old lovers.”
Daniel Silva books had been recommended to me by a literal FBI agent I met on vacation. I read The Unlikely Spy in 2023 and as I look back on my review for that one, I remember virtually none of it.
I had decided to try him again, but with the Gabriel Allon series— others had told me it was a great series. The Kill Artist is definitely better than The Unlikely Spy but still one I could see myself completely forgetting in a few months’ time. Though, to be fair, that is kinda the spy genre in general to me. They’re good for some action and espionage and maybe even a little history, but there’s not a lot that sticks with me.
I could still see myself continuing this series (in a very slow progression) because the main character— Gabriel Allon— is intriguing. The Unlikely Spy was a standalone book so many of the characters were largely inconsequential. I like the idea of a series and being able to see character development and build on Allon’s story.
Plus, Gabriel Allon is both an art restorer and an assassin and that’s an interesting combination.
We get part of his backstory in this book: his wife and son were killed in a car bombing the night he was planning to get out of the assassination business. Fast forward several years and while continuing to use his skills in art restoration he is called upon again by the organization to go after a terrorist who killed an Israeli ambassador in an effort to disrupt peace operations between Palestine and Israel. The only reason he takes the job is because the terrorist is the one believed to have killed his family.
It was interesting to read this book now that Palestine and Israel have been at war. The tension between these two groups has been longstanding and the conflict is complicated. Even now, I don’t full understand it completely so I won’t act like I know what is currently going on or what was going on at the time this book was written. In the book, Gabriel is the Israeli assassin and Tariq is the Palestinian terrorist. I didn’t get the feeling like I was supposed to be empathetic towards Tariq so it’s possible with the way things are today, some readers who are more sympathetic towards the Palestinian people may not like his portrayal in the book.
Sometimes when I read espionage thrillers it’s hard for me to really grasp all the political implications, especially if they’re historically based, so I’m sure I missed some important things in this book. I like a good spy thriller but I don’t like when there are too many political characters to keep track of. At least this book seemed easier to navigate than The Unlikely Spy.
I do think Gabriel Allon’s character is what keeps people coming back to this series and recommending it to others. He seems like the kind of person a reader would want to root for. A man avenging his family’s death. A man now unattached, living a quiet, gentle life wrapped up in the careful and skilled craft of art restoration. A man willing to take a lonely little boy under his wings and make him feel important. A man who may be an assassin but, in contrast to Tariq, takes care to avoid ‘needless death.’
I glanced at some of the next books in the series (there’s 25 so who knows how far it all progresses) and it seems like Gabriel is reluctant to get back into the assassin work and so he is just ‘on-call’ when something relevant to his life/history pops up or something that requires his particular skills.
Recommendation
This book is not really an exciting read that I’m bubbling over to tell people about, but the main character is enough for me to be interested in continuing the series.
If global-political-spy-assassin-type books are your jam, then I would definitely give this series a shot. It seems like there are a lot of people who really love it.
If you do not like global-political-spy-assassin type books I can’t think of a reason for why you should invest your time in this author in general. If you would like to get into this type of genre, maybe try Robert Dugoni’s Charles Jenkins series. That seems like a better place to dip your toes in the water.
Between the swearing and the somewhat slow-moving plot and political terrain to navigate, this wasn’t really a book that is going to make it on the short list of any recommendations I make; however, I am hopeful that as the series progresses and Silva hones his craft and fleshes out Gabriel Allon’s character, I think I will enjoy the later books better. *fingers crossed*
[Content Advisory: 34 f-words, 22 s-words; a lot of blaspheming; some sexual content, in particular a photography scene]
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