An Inside Job
Art restorer and former spy Gabriel Allon, who recently completed a rather disquieting assignment in Cornwall, is back. He is chilling in Venice when he spots a body bobbing in the lagoon, and then it all unravels before you can say da Vinci!
An Inside Job is Daniel Silva’s latest caper in which everyone, in fact, keeps uttering (err...muttering) da Vinci throughout its nearly 400 pages.
Turns out the body is that of a former Vatican apprentice who has stumbled upon, yes, a previously undiscovered portrait by da Vinci. As you can well imagine, this ensures that our favourite, seriously good-looking art restorer (this reviewer cannot help but imagine George Clooney acing such a role) takes off on a globe-trotting mission to hunt for the missing portrait. Along the way, we meet conniving priests, laidback members of the Carabinieri, sleek criminals and bungling bankers, among others.
Gabriel is as charismatic as ever and increasingly world-weary. And yet, his morality does not allow him to sit tight ever. That said, this is not one of Silva’s greatest outings.
There have been better ones: A Death in Cornwall, for instance, where he is searching for a stolen Picasso, has a much tighter plot and better twists. An Inside Job often gets stuck in a loop of Vatican details — there’s only so much priestly skullduggery one can take!