I think what may have killed this book for me was I read this just after reading John Le Carre's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold--and after having recently read Alan Furst and Eric Ambler while working through a recommendation list that included Silva among this number. I got spoiled and after reading the best in the espionage genre this struck me as nothing more than a generic pulp thriller with all the writing skill, complexity of characterization and plotting of a blow'm up rat-tat-tat of a popcorn chomping action adventure flick.
It doesn't help that in the first hundred or so pages Silva rotates the points of views so quickly. I didn't get invested enough in any character early on to really get hooked. This is supposedly the first in a series of novels about Gabriel Allon, an Israeli agent fighting terrorists. We're introduced to him only as "the restorer" and then as "the stranger" and it's quite a while before he's linked to Gabriel Allon who seems less a starring player as just one in an ensemble cast. His opponent "Tariq" is the usual cut-out cardboard Muslim terrorist--as quick to execute a lover or someone on his own side as the enemy and without remorse. The style is decent enough, but nothing in the novel raised this to anything memorable among the many "dicklit" thrillers that spend some time in the bestseller list.
