Political Thriller Book Review: The New Girl by Daniel Silva

´They were racing westward along the A89 Autoroute, the chief of the Israeli secret intelligence service and the future King of Saudi Arabia´.

I am a big fan of the Gabriel Allon series by Daniel Silva but somehow I skipped the last year installment. When I´ve read the New Girl the dramatic changes in the Middle East were underway and probably those are the best news of this damned year so far: the UAE and Bahrain signed a peace treaty with the state of Israel - although they never been officially at war. The so-called Abraham Accords were announced in a sensitive political moment and at a White House occupied by a problematic president, but no one assumes that they are the result of only of a couple of months of negotiations. Probably, those historical agreements are in the making for good couple of years and hopefully, the two countries that will normalize the relationships with the state of Israel are not the only ones. 

Enough with my political enthusiasm. There is enough to talk about in Daniel Silva´s book. Allon, the Israel´s top spy is operating on behalf of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia - KBM - who has many similarities with the controversial MBS - who allowed the women to drive, but also locked his relatives in Ritz Carlton and also decided the murder of an inconvenient journalist, which in the book is called Omar Nawwaf. 

Allon is trying to save the world balance in the Middle East from a Russian-led conspiration and it sounds as post-Cold War as possible. Realistic yet embelished and antagonised with the courage of writing imagination. Although, as usual, the story has a high dosis of suspense, cruelty and unknown terrorists, as well as old characters, as the Philby daughter, former chief of the British intelligence that spied for the Russians, I´ve felt more than once that the story of the Saudi Crown Prince disbalanced the story and many details were too much molded in order to replicate the real-time events and the character. Otherwise, expect a very suspensful ending.

Silva´s latest, The Order is approaching a topic not necessarily very popular those days, but often associated with a hollow of darkness...Hopefully will be able to finish it in the next four weeks.

Rating: 3.5 stars