Review: "The Fallen Angel"

With so many wonderful novels out there priced below $5.00 for the e-book version, I have to be very familiar with the quality of an author’s work before shelling out $12.99 (or more) for an ebook. That said, I spend more than $20 that going to see a movie with my husband, so why shouldn’t I pay $10 or so for a book? That’s fodder for another post, though.

Daniel Silva’s “The Fallen Angel” is the latest in his Gabriel Allon series. I’ve read all of his previous books and genuinely enjoyed each one. So, I was familiar with Mr. Silva’s writing style, attention to detail, and engaging characters and therefore willing to pay a bit more for an ebook. “Fallen Angel” did not disappoint.

Ebook formatting: 5 stars
The Kindle version was well formatted with navigation links, a table of contents, and appropriate paragraph spacing. You might think, “Well duh, it’s from a major publisher- of COURSE it’s done correctly”. Oh, if only that held true.

Editing: 5 stars
Professionally edited (of course) and not by someone who is just phoning it in. Of course Mr. Silva is an established, successful, author with a successful journalist for a wife, so he knows his craft and practices it with professionalism.

Plot: 4 stars
The book starts off with a murder mystery and morphs into an international crisis (of course). The murder mystery felt a bit contrived to me, but was intriguing enough to catch and hold my attention and I truly felt for the twin sister of the murdered woman. The crisis in Jerusalem was the stuff of nightmares and uncomfortably realistic. That’s Silva’s genius, though. “The Rembrandt Affair” was very prescient regarding Iranian nuclear enrichment and international efforts to sabotage that process. Since I unabashedly agree with the political views of Silva’s books, I had no trouble with the pedantic passages on Middle Eastern strife and Biblical history.

Character development: 3 stars
This area constitutes my biggest complaint with “The Fallen Angel”. Gabriel Allon’s wife, Chiara is such a flat character that I honestly wonder sometimes if she’s not just a painting Gabriel is trying to restore. We get so much insight into so many of the repeating characters in this series, including His Holiness the (fictional) Pope, Eli Lavon, and Adrian Carter, that the lack of development for Chiara is very noticeable. Mr. Silva has proven time and again that he can write female characters with amazing depth. I wish he would spend some time fleshing out the second Mrs. Allon.

Summary: 4 stars
“The Fallen Angel” delivers a fast paced spy thriller with a murder mystery as bonus content. This is a thinking man’s, or woman’s, book. If you if you like your storylines bland and non-controversial, find something else to read. You cannot read "The Fallen Angel" without worrying about the future of Israel and the escalation of global religious warfare.