Guest Review of "A Death in Vienna" and "Prince of Fire" by Daniel Silva (Gabriel Allon, Book #4 & #5)

This guest review is by Shirley Ayres.

A Death in Vienna by Daniel Silva
(2004)

Israeli spy/art restorer Gabriel Allon is sent to Vienna to investigate a bombing that killed an old friend, Max Klein.  It seems that Max had seen a very prominent Vienna citizen but recognized him as an SS killer from the death camps.
Now Max is dead and Gabriel is trying to prove that Herr Vogel the businessman is really Erich Radak, the Nazi killer.
Again, Silva looks into a disgraceful and horrible past and points fingers at everyone involved or at least complicit in the murder of millions by the Nazis.

Prince of Fire by Daniel Silva
(2005)

 Gabriel Allon, Israeli spy, is working in Venice restoring a Bellini altarpiece when a powerful car bomb in Rome takes out the Israeli Embassy.  Then, four men in a follow-up car shoot survivors coming out of the wreckage.  The PLO takes credit for the mass killings.  Later, in a raid on a PLO flat in Milan, evidence is found that they know Gabriel’s identity and where he worked in Venice.  Gabriel is ordered back to Israel immediately, never to finish the Bellini restoration.
            In this book, Yasir Arafat, leader of the PLO is shown to be behind most of the worst terrorist-based murders, including the murder of the Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich, Germany in 1972.  The author gives the reader the geography and history of the area once known as Palestine.
Silva writes with an exciting style that keeps the reader interested and informed.