Review: Prince of Fire by Daniel Silva

Title:Prince of Fire (the 5th of 9 Gabriel Allon novels)

Author: Daniel Silva

Publisher: Michael Joseph [2005]

ISBN: 0-7181-4849-5

No. of pages: 366

When the Israeli Embassy in Rome is attacked by suicide bombers the Israeli Secret Service investigate. They discover that this attack is only one in a chain planned against Jewish targets and one of their former agents, Gabriel Allon who now works as an art restorer in Venice, is under threat of assassination as part of the campaign. Allon and his girlfriend, a field agent for the Service, are brought back to Israel where Allon becomes involved in the search for the terrorists.

The thriller is told in several distinct parts that roughly coincide with Allon’s movement from one country to another as he either leaves a place due to the risks he faces or enters a new country to go on the offensive. This starkly demonstrates the compartmentalised nature of his life and adds an intellectual dimension that isn’t present in many thrillers. The heart of the story, the search for one particular terrorist, is skillfully told and the incorporation of real figures into the fiction, such as a meeting between Allon and Yasser Arafat, add to the realistic feel of the story. As always though with this series the thriller element is only part of the content. The other is the provision of a sense, one view among millions, of the conflicts, dreams and sadness that have defined Arab/Israeli relations for decades. Towards the end of the book Allon has a conversation with his friend and mentor about the way Arabs within the borders of the newly partitioned Israel were dealt with in 1948 and it is saddening to realise how little things have changed in the intervening 60 years.

As well as good stories Silva writes some of the best male characters you’ll read in thrillers. Gabriel Allon is a marvellously layered person: artist, assassin, husband, chameleon. He’s always introspective but in this book he questions his own actions and those of the country he loves more than ever and it’s very thought provoking. Ari Shamron, former Director-General of the Service and now adviser and friend to Gabriel is a harsher warrior and provides a different kind of insight as well as much of the historical context regarding activities that take place. The female characters are less well developed although here there are glimpses of some quite intriguing women including one of the terrorists who is as psychologically damaged by her past as Allon is by his.

I have read most of the Gabriel Allon novels but for some reason have read them out of order. I have a quite disjointed view of the story threads that run across more than one book, but for the most part they are self-contained stories and they can be read independently.

Silva is a journalist by training and demonstrates something of a cross-over in skills. His writing is tight and while there is a real depth to his observations about the human condition he never forgets that to tell a story you have to keep people reading right to the end. Prince of Fire does this admirably.

My rating 4/5

 

Review: Pandemic by Daniel Kalla

Title: Pandemic

Author: Daniel Kalla

Publisher: Tor Books [2005]

ISBN: 975-0765-35084-8

No. of Pages: 407

In China’s Gansu Province there’s an outbreak of a deadly virus similar to the Spanish Flu that killed 20 million people in 1919. Dr Noah Haldane and a team of experts from the World Health Organisation (WHO) are called in to help the authorities identify and contain the virus. Just as things seem to be under control there are further outbreaks in Hong Kong and London. On top of having to address the medical issues the authorities are worried that the disease may not be spreading naturally.

This is a fairly standard thriller with a  serviceable but not terribly unique plot. Virulent disease outbreaks, the threat of terrorism, doctors running around saving the world in the nick of time have all been done before. But more familiar than that is the roles and attributes assigned to various groups and people. The main characters are all good-looking, the Chinese are horribly authoritarian, the bad guys are all fundamentalist Muslims and the Americans are all heroes. The cliché ratio was just a bit too high for me. That aside, the book moves along at a good pace and there’s lots of action scattered across the globe. The ending is a little predictable but there’s only so many places a thriller can go so that’s far more forgivable than the cliché count.

Kalla’s made a valiant attempt to make the characters more than two-dimensional but, at least as far as the main characters are concerned, hasn’t really succeeded. As well as being a hard-working, brilliant, emerging pathogens expert Noah Haldine is a loving father going through some marital troubles but the threads dealing with his personal life all felt a bit forced to me. The other main character is the American ‘bug czar’: the female head of Counter-Bioterrorism who’s also a brilliant, sexy, workaholic going through a marriage breakdown. You don’t need me to actually write the phrase ’sexual tension’ do you? Kalla’s done a much better job with the minor characters such Noah’s fellow WHO doctor and the Egyptian policeman who plays a pivotal role in uncovering the terrorists’ activity. For me they were far more engaging and interesting although their appearances were too brief.

This is Kalla’s first novel and he’s written four more since then. Because I’ve been struggling to feed my medical thriller habit since I gave up on the rubbish Robin Cook writes these days and because there are some elements here that show potential I’m prepared to give him another go. But only if I can mooch something.

My rating 2.5/5

Other stuff

On a slightly off-topic note I’m going to rant about the author’s website. I’ve ranted about the issue of bad author websites before but, seriously, I don’t think it gets much worse than this. Why bother? There’s a nice photo of the author in his scrubs (in case you missed the fact he’s a doctor) and a whole load of over the top pull quotes from reviews and some extremely dull video. There’s not even a synopsis of any of his books (presumably you have to click on one of the dozens of links to online stores for that but I metaphorically stomped off and didn’t click anything).

 

Review: Freezing Point by Karen Dionne

Title: Freezing Point

Author: Karen Dionne

Publisher: Jove Books [2008]

ISBN: 978-0-515-14536-6

The world’s supply of fresh water is decreasing right at the point need for the commodity is increasing exponentially so it seems only natural that some corporation headed by someone evil will try to melt any icebergs created at the planet’s poles and sell the resulting water to the highest bidder. Equally naturally are environmentalists who are opposed to this idea and will take violent actions to make their point. Throw in an unknown virus, a new breed of animal and a few severe storms and you have the basic building blocks of Freezing Point. 

The elements of a story I would like are present here: a remote location, environmental activists, sinister corporations, vaguely plausible science, and, at least potentially, a strong female character. However it’s not enough for a book to tick all the boxes, it still has to have an engaging story that links all the elements together and engrosses you so heavily that you forget you’ve read a load of books in the genre. This one didn’t achieve that for me. The story, such as it was, was entirely predictable from the outset, contained a load of half-finished threads that were plain annoying and had science and environmental messages so clunkily inserted into the narrative that the thing consistently felt more like a text book or a lefty diatribe than the thriller it was purported to be. I abhor being preached at in my fiction.

Also, while thrillers are allowed (even supposed) to have a series of unlikely events occurring simultaneously to create the perfect storm (literal or metaphorical) I need some realism in the mix. So many people in this story took such unrealistic actions that I rarely got past the ‘that just wouldn’t happen even in fiction-land’ mindset. 

The book had a lot of characters introduced in quick succession and many were never heard from again so keeping track of who they all were and where they fit into the big picture required more effort than it should have done. None of them were fleshed out well enough to be truly engaging. Zo, the female character I should have liked, viewed every comment or action taken by male characters as misogynistic which grew tiresome. The other people were all a bit too black or white (all good or all evil) for me to really buy them and I’ve no clue why Rebecca (the avenging environmentalist) was even in the book as she really took no active part in the plot. Again, as with the story, there were lots of unexplained character developments dumped in the mix for no apparent reason such as several people despising each other with passion but without explanation (except in one instance). 

There are a few interesting action-based passages here but, overall, the interesting concept that must have been the idea behind this book was lost in the delivery. The cover of my copy pronounces Dionne to be the next Michael Crichton but the very big difference between the two is that Crichton entertains first and allows his mastery of the storytelling art to relay any messages almost subliminally whereas Dionne, at least in this book which is her first, seems to assume readers will put up with second-rate storytelling if the messages are worthy enough. I’m harder to please than that.

My rating 2/5