However, I hope the series gets back to form soon. I will continue with the series (as of today I am at # 10 of 18). I read “The Defector” in an airport and on a plane. I think that struggle is clearly evident in the quality of the novel’s last 20 or so pages. Silva admits to struggling to meet his deadline with this book. And, in all likelihood, they never would.” It is a sobering thought and one that clearly disturbs Silva. At one point in the story a character muses, “Russians had never known true democracy. This book was published in 2009 and yet 10 years later Putin still holds Russia in his iron grip. He constantly keeps coming back to the same tropes and as a result, the novel felt even more clichéd.Ī plus is that just like the previous novel, Silva goes after the totalitarian antics of Russia’s “elected” prime minister (dictator) Vladimir Putin. This novel fills out the genre’s clichés and then some.Īn issue I had with the text is that Silva repeats himself a lot in this book and I never saw the point. Silva usually rises above that genre) and this book is not as good as earlier books in the series, some of which had some real genre busting moments. “The Defector” reads like a conventional thriller (I think Mr.
Silva’s Gabriel Allon series and it follows right on the heels of its predecessor, “Moscow Rules”, so really this text is just an extenuation of that story. Faced with the prospect of losing the one thing he holds most dear, Gabriel will be tested in ways he never imagined possible. It will take him from a quiet mews in London, to the shores of Lake Como, to the glittering streets of Geneva and Zurich, and, finally, to a heart-stopping climax in the snowbound birch forests of Russia. In the days to come, Gabriel and his team of operatives will find themselves in a deadly duel of nerve and wits with one of the world's most ruthless men: the murderous Russian oligarch and arms dealer Ivan Kharkov. Promise me I won't end up in an unmarked grave. But the punishment for betrayal remains the same. He also knows he made a promise.ĭo you know what we do with traitors, Gabriel? Many things have changed in Russia since the fall of Communism. British intelligence is sure he was a double agent all along, but Gabriel knows better. The defector and former Russian intelligence officer Grigori Bulganov, who saved Gabriel’s life in Moscow, has vanished without a trace. But his idyllic world is once again thrown into turmoil with shocking news from London. Six months after the dramatic conclusion of Moscow Rules, Gabriel has returned to the tan hills of Umbria to resume his honeymoon with his new wife, Chiara, and restore a seventeenth-century altarpiece for the Vatican.
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