An Inside Job - Daniel Silva - 5 Stars

[Olivermagnus]

I look forward to Daniel Silva's new Gabriel Allon book every July, and I was excited to get #25 An Inside Job. Gabriel is now retired and is busy working for his wife's restoration company as an art restorer. They live in Venice with their twin children, Raphael and Irene.

He's busy workng on a couple of restorations when he discovers a dead woman in the waters of the Venetian Lagoon. It turns out she was an art restoration student serving in the Vatican museums. That soon leads him to the Rome, where it's possible the murder is related to a lost DaVinci, which could be worth many millions of dollars. Unfortunately, it has somehow somehow disappeared from the Vatican storage vaults.

Gabriel tells hs good friend, Luigi Donati, the Supreme Pontiff that it had to have been an "inside job". The rest of the book is how they actually put together a plan to create a copy of the daVinci and substitute it for the real one.

There are lots of characters in this story but they all had a role to play. While characters from previous books appear, it's not necessary to have read those books before starting this one.

I really love the earlier books where Gabriel worked as an assassin for Israel's Mossad. I wasn't sure how I would enjoy the newer books, but I think Silva has done a great job of growing his characters in a believable way.

This was a well researched book and everyone who has read a Gabriel Allon book knows Silva is very knowledgeable about the art world. His Afterword tells the reader what is true and how current events fit into the fictional story. I can't wait to see what's next for Gabriel in July 2026.