The Fallen Angel (Gabriel Allon #12)

The Fallen Angel by Daniel Silva is book twelve in the Gabriel Allon series. Gabriel is an artist whose career was interrupted when his country needed him, and he spent most of his life in the service of Israel's Mossad. Now he is retired and just wants to restore paintings.

He is currently working on a Caravaggio for the Vatican. But when a woman is found dead in St. Peter's Basilica, Monsignor Luigi Donati asks Gabriel to investigate. Donati had asked the woman to catalog the art and artifacts in the Vatican in order to make sure they each had a provenance and there would be no surprises. Just after she called to tell him she found something, she ended up dead.Now Gabriel is pulled back from his retirement and into the center of an international ring of looted antiquities, murder, and terrorism that spans the globe.

Daniel Silva writes espionage thrillers better than anyone else. He is a master of sucking in readers before the first paragraph has been completed. Gabriel Allon is an amazing character that readers would follow anywhere.

Silva, Daniel. (2012). The Fallen Angel. New York: Harper.