An Inside Job

An Inside Job (2025) is the 25th book in American author Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon spy thriller series. Silva has become a #1 New York Times bestselling author with multiple titles in the series reaching number one. The main character, Gabriel Allon, is an Israeli art restorer, spymaster, and assassin. An Inside Job takes place while he is based in Venice, Italy, where he finds a woman’s body. Gabriel’s investigation into her death leads to the discovery of a lost Leonardo da Vinci painting and Vatican corruption with links to organized crime. As the mystery unfolds, the novel explores the themes of The Deceptive Nature of Appearances, Preserving Reputation at All Costs, and The Limits of the Law. Silva was a journalist and correspondent for CNN before leaving the job to write full-time in 1997.

This guide is based on the HarperCollins 2025 Kindle edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide feature depictions of graphic violence, war, death, and substance use.

Plot Summary

The novel takes place in a contemporary timeframe that spans approximately one year. While Gabriel is based in Venice, many of the chapters cover events in other parts of Italy, Switzerland, France, and Denmark. An omniscient narrative voice is used, though events are primarily described from Gabriel’s point of view.

Gabriel Allon is an art conservator living in Venice with his wife and twin children. He is an expert at restoring Renaissance paintings and is kept busy because of his formidable reputation. One day, he spots the corpse of a drowning victim in the Venice Canal. Because of Gabriel’s skill as an artist, he is asked to reconstruct the facial features of the unidentified woman. She turns out to be an art restoration specialist currently working at the Vatican, and her death appears to be murder. 

Gabriel has retired from his earlier years in espionage work, but he can’t resist conducting an investigation of his own. He also has contacts within the Vatican, the police, the art world, and knows various criminals who have assisted him on previous cases. He draws on all these resources to piece together the story of how Penelope “Penny” Radcliff ended up in the lagoon.

She had been working on a minor restoration project when she discovered another painting hidden under the first. Penny believed it was a lost work by Leonardo da Vinci. Her boss discouraged this idea, and a famous art historian was paid off to deny the painting’s authenticity. When Gabriel asks to see the picture, he learns that it has been stolen from the Vatican’s secured storage facility. He then learns from contacts in the art world that an unknown masterpiece has just hit the market.

Using a gallery owner in London to pose as a bidder, Gabriel discovers that the painting is being held in a Swiss bank controlled by an underworld gang known as the Camorra. Gabriel enlists the aid of a Swiss financier and a computer hacker to infiltrate the bank’s system to figure out how the painting ended up there. The trail of evidence leads to two financiers, who are linked to Cardinal Bertoli, the third most powerful prelate in the Catholic Church. He is responsible for investing the Vatican’s money. After one of his real estate deals goes bad, the Camorra bank demands repayment, and the cardinal arranges for the painting to be stolen.

Gabriel’s friends on the Art Squad can’t proceed through regular channels to get the painting back without creating a scandal for the church, so Gabriel uses unofficial channels instead. He makes an expert forgery of the painting and has his art gallery friends pose as bidders to drive up the price of the picture to half a billion dollars. When a Russian oligarch living in France outbids everyone else, the Camorra flies to his villa to deliver the painting. With the help of the French Art Squad, Gabriel switches out the picture at the airport during a routine inspection. The oligarch receives the painting, none the wiser. The funds he pays to the Camorra bank are diverted to a Ukrainian bank as a donation to help with the war against Russia.  

When the cardinal and the Camorra realize they have been duped, they arrange for an assassin to kill the pope and Gabriel because they know too much about the art theft. The assassination attempt is foiled, and the cardinal and much of the Camorra organization are arrested. Gabriel restores the lost Leonardo, which is displayed in the Vatican Museum, without the public realizing the corruption in the church that led to its theft. The novel concludes by suggesting that sometimes extralegal means are the best way to make sure that justice is served.