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Book Summary and Reviews of Portrait of a Spy by Daniel Silva

Portrait of a Spy by Daniel Silva

Portrait of a Spy

by Daniel Silva

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  • Jul 2011, 464 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Haunted by his failure to stop a suicide bomber in London, Gabriel Allon is summoned to Washington and drawn into a confrontation with the new face of global terror. At the center of the threat is an American-born cleric in Yemen who was once a paid CIA asset.

Gabriel and his team devise a daring plan to destroy the network of death - from the inside - a gambit fraught with risk, both personal and professional. To succeed, Gabriel must reach into his violent past. A woman waits there - a reclusive heiress and art collector who can traverse the murky divide between Islam and the West. She is the daughter of an old enemy, and together they form an unlikely and dangerous bond.

Set against the disparate worlds of art and intelligence, Portrait of a Spy moves swiftly from the corridors of power in Washington to the glamorous auction houses of New York and London to the unforgiving landscape of the Saudi desert. Featuring a climax that will leave readers haunted long after they turn the final page, this deeply entertaining story is also a breathtaking portrait of courage in the face of unspeakable evil - and Daniel Silva's most extraordinary novel to date.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Just what you'd expect of this New York Times top seller..." - Library Journal

This information about Portrait of a Spy was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Peter Gray

Portrait of a Spy
An excellent and very different storyline. I listened to this book rather than read it and the suspense was held right through to the end.

Ginger

Portrait of A Spy
The plot is so up to date with what is happening in our world today that it made the book even more exciting. I found myself as always falling deeper in love with Gabriel Allon. His sensitive nature as an artist balances his killer instincts for God and country. I truly cannot wait for Mr. Silva's next novel. Sincerely

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Author Information

Daniel Silva Author Biography

Photo: John Earle

Daniel Silva knew from an early age that he wanted to become a writer, but his first profession would be journalism. Born in Michigan, raised and educated in California, he was pursuing a master's degree in international relations when he received a temporary job offer from United Press International to help cover the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. Later that year Silva abandoned his studies and joined UPI fulltime, working first in San Francisco, then on the foreign desk in Washington, and finally as Middle East correspondent in Cairo and the Persian Gulf. In 1987, while covering the Iran-Iraq war, he met NBC Today National Correspondent Jamie Gangel and they were married later that year. Silva returned to Washington and went to work for CNN and became ...

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