The best laid plans are often sidetracked by life's interruptions. Because our book club was canceled for April, I felt I had ample time to read a number of books before the May book club. However, IT, happened and my free time, airplane, and travel time were usurped.
It took me a bit longer to finish Silva's 2021 book than I had expected. Drawing on many characters from past novels, The Cellist takes place as the world is in the grip of the pandemic. There are countless references to lock-downs, masks, and COVID-19.
The book begins, as many of his do, with the very suspicious death of Viktor Orlov, a close friend of the Israeli intelligence commander, Gabriel Allon. The body is discovered by Sarah Bancroft, who had worked with Allon in previous novels and is now working at Isherwood Fine Arts. When she finds Orlov at his desks, she strongly believes that he was poisoned by some sort of nerve agent. Her connection to Orlov was in regard to money she was to collect for the restoration of a painting the gallery had sold to a Russian oligarch.She In a very convoluted way, this leads to the introduction of the cellist in the novel's title - Isabel Brenner, who works for RhineBank, AG in Germany as a money launderer. Allon devises a scheme to find Orlov's killer and recruits Brenner to become his prime operative.
From a London, to Geneva, to Zurich to France, Jerusalem and even Wilmington, DE, Silva whirls the reader through a maze of banks, concert halls, museums and villas as he delves into the money laundering schemes of Russia and its wealthy leader, Vladimir Putin. The novel's culmination is at the January 6th Insurrection in Washington, an ending that Silva completely rewrote having been an eyewitness that day while being in Washington on business. One of the hallmarks of the Gabriel Allon and Silva books is how closely they are tied to the geopolitical real-world events. This was no exception and provides the author a virtual soapbox from which he can deliver his political views, which are quite critical of the 45th president and his followers. The author's notes at the end of the book are illuminating and indicative of the research that Silva does for his novels.
This wasn't one of my favorite Allon books, but a good read, nonetheless. It is my intent to finish the 2022 novel before his new tome is released in July, 2023. Too many books and not enough time.
