An Inside Job

An Inside Job is the 25th thriller in the Gabriel Allon series. Although Gabriel is presented throughout the series as a middle-aged man who has retired from his former life in covert ops, his complete history is told in flashbacks as characters in various novels reconnect him to events from his past. Going back to the very beginning of his personal biography, Gabriel started out in life as a promising art student who was tagged by the head of Israeli intelligence to serve his country. His new boss wanted to use him to avenge the murder of Israeli Olympic athletes and coaches by a Palestinian organization. Gabriel soon finds himself playing the role of master spy and assassin operating under the identity of an art restorer.

In his early years with Israeli intelligence, Gabriel’s missions revolve around Israel’s history, the rise of Zionism, and the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict. His knowledge of art involves him in cases related to the Holocaust, Nazi wartime looting of valuable artworks, and the complicity of the Vatican in allowing these crimes to be perpetrated. 

The first novel in the series, The Kill Artist, was published in 2000, and the author intended it to be a standalone novel. At the beginning of the series, Gabriel was characterized as a grieving recluse living in England. Years earlier, his son was killed, and his wife had a mental health crisis after they were targeted in a bombing attack. The perpetrator of the attack is now out of hiding and is planning to disrupt the current round of peace talks in the Middle East. Gabriel succeeds in foiling the plot and gains closure on his tragic past. By book eight, Gabriel’s first wife has become psychologically stable enough to grant him a divorce, and he subsequently marries his second wife, Chiara, and starts a family with her.

Throughout the series, Gabriel’s profession in art links him to an international array of rich, powerful, and nefarious characters, and he is tasked with stopping their schemes by any means necessary. He accumulates a cast of supporting characters from one novel to the next, many of whom are seen in An Inside Job. The novels are usually set in the same time period as they are written and reference current global events. Silva intends to continue Gabriel’s adventures with Book 26 due to be published in 2026.