Rating: 
Summary: A STELLAR VOICE PERFORMANCE
Review:
Although a scion of Hollywood's famed Goldwyn family, Tony Goldwyn has very much made it on his own as producer, director, and actor. As producer he brought us "A Walk On The Moon" (1999); as director he gave us "Someone Like You" (2001). His acting credits are extensive with TV appearances running the gamut from "Frasier" to "L.A. Law." He voiced the title character for Disney's "Tarzan." All who heard know he is a voice performer par excellence, and this is evidenced once again in his reading of Silva's latest.
International suspense is Daniel Silva's milieu, and strongly imagined characters only one of his strengths. He has been compared to the masterful John le Carre, and rightly so. "A Death In Vienna" is related to two of his earlier works, "The English Assassin" and "The Confessor." For pure pleasure and a greater appreciation read or listen to all three.
This time out an art restorer who doubles as a spy, Gabriel Allon, is summoned to Vienna where an old friend has died in a bombing. His task is to ferret out the truth behind this death. As clues lead to a man now living in Vienna, the search takes on new meaning for Allon as he reads his mother's account of her days in a concentration camp: "I will not tell all the things I saw. I cannot. I owe this much to the dead." - Testimony of Irene Allon, March 19, 1957.
Not only may this man be responsible for his friend's death, but may also have tried to kill Allon's mother. Shadows of the Holocaust fall on this elegantly wrought tale of suspense.
- Gail Cooke
Rating: 
Summary: On the trail of a Nazi war criminal.
Review: "A Death in Vienna" is Daniel Silva's third novel about how the horrors of the Holocaust reach into the present. Gabriel Allon is a former Israeli spy who now works as an art restoration expert in Venice. His old boss from the Israeli Intelligence Service, Ari Shamron, appears one day with devastating news about an explosion in Vienna. Gabriel is not anxious to go back to the city where his wife and son had been victims of a car bomb in 1991. However, Shamron persuades him to return to this "forbidden city" to investigate the bombing of the Wartime Claims and Inquiries Office, which left two young women dead and an old friend, Eli Lavon, in a coma. Gabriel soon learns that a man named Max Klein had set the events in motion that may have led to the bombing. Klein had once been a violinist in the Auschwitz camp orchestra and he had a particularly vivid memory of a Nazi named Erich Radek. In front of Klein, Radek once killed fifteen concentration camp prisoners in cold blood when they could not correctly identify a musical piece by Brahms. Many years later, Klein spots this same war criminal placidly having coffee in a Viennese café, and he reports what he has seen to Eli Lavon, who then begins to make the inquiries that almost cost him his life. Gabriel's investigation leads him to make some horrifying discoveries, the most painful one being the heart-rending story of his mother's two years of hell as an inmate of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Silva writes with great feeling about the harrowing events of the Holocaust and the culpability of those who helped the Nazis escape punishment after the war ended. In addition, Silva convincingly makes the point that radical right-wing political parties still pose a serious threat around the world, and that we must do everything in our power to protect our civil liberties in the face of these extremists. "A Death in Vienna" is fast-paced, compelling, and filled with intriguing twists and turns. It is a worthy, well-researched, and thought-provoking conclusion to Silva's excellent trilogy.
Rating:
Summary: Masterful Thriller
Review: "A Death in Vienna" is the kind of book Frederick Forsythe used to write. This tightly written thriller recalls the best elements of Forsythe's 'Oddessa File.' in which the sins of the Holocaust are recalled in the framework of hunting down a suspected Nazi war criminal. Silva manages to convey the horror of the Holocaust without being preachy, and has come up with a page-turning globe-trotting novel with a strong heart, plenty of action, and a compelling cast.
Silva's writing keeps getting better and better.
Rating:
Summary: Holocaust justice
Review: Daniel Silva in his excellent and compelling novel "A Death in Vienna" resurrects his fascinating character, world renowned art restorer and sometimes Israeli secret agent Gabriel Allon. At the behest of his former boss, legendary Israeli spymaster Ari Shamron, Allon travels to Vienna to investigate an explosion in the Office of Wartime Claims. A former colleague Eli Lavon was seriously injured and two young office girls were killed in the blast. Foul play is suspected. Vienna holds only unpleasant memories for Allon as that is precisely where his young son was killed and wife maimed in a car bomb meant for him. Visiting his comatose friend Lavon in the hospital Allon meets an old man and Holocaust survivor Max Klein there. Klein had accidently encountered a wealthy, distinguished Austrian man in a cafe and recognized him as a notorious high ranking Nazi officer in Auschwitz. He reported this to Lavon who assured him that he'd investigate. The man named Ludwig Vogel, a wealthy indusrialist is presently financing the campaign for chancellor of Austria of Peter Metzler. Allon soon learns that Vogel is actually Erich Radek, a Nazi war criminal responsible for numerous atrocities during Hitler's Final Solution. He surprisingly discovers that Radek, is part of the recollections of his mother Irene, also a mentally tortured Holocaust survivor. Allon has all the motivation he needs to bring Radek's involvement to the surface and sets out to accomplish exactly that. Along the way. unforeseen stumbling blocks impede his progress. Silva is his continuing passionate saga of Gabriel Allon using the Holocaust as a backdrop, again proves his undeniably superior writing talent. He again fashioned a piece that was impossible to put down.
Rating:
Summary: An another outstanding effort
Review: Daniel Silva is fast becoming one of my favorite authors. Without giving the story away, Mr. Silva writes in a prose that is so clear that you feel like you have been transported to Italy, and have become a witness to the story. In short this is a must read suspense novel that the reader will find is well-plotted and well-written story.
Rating: 
Summary: My Least Favorite of the Holocaust Trilogy
Review: Gabriel Allon, art restorer/Israeli spy-assassin is back in the third installment dealing with the sins of the past. Allon is pulled from his art restoration project when a friend who is active is tracking down Nazi war criminals is the target of an assassination attempt. As his friend fights for his life, Allon delves into the reasons behind the attack. What he finds becomes personal when it appears that his Mother had encounters in Jewish prison camps in the WWII era with the very man who might be responsible for the assassination attempt. The book, while at times fast moving, seems to drag and be more predictable than most of Silva's books. I enjoyed The Confessor much more than this book.
Rating:
Summary: PAIN ON EVERY PAGE...
Review: I don't know much about Mr. Daniel Silva but it feels as he lived through the events or at least was exposed to stories told by people, who lived through the events described in the book.
This is a case, somewhat familiar, of a hunt for an old Nazi, who was able to escape the prosecution. Yes, this approach was used on a number of times by many good writers in order to tell the story of the war, pain, terror, suffering, survival and escape of the criminal, who played the system and the system protected him. All these books end up with some kind of a punishment but neither writer nor the reader are ever satisfied. Even the worst punishment cannot restore the wrong done to so many innocent people and it never returns the dead. But, nevertheless, the punishment is important and it has to be public in order for people to realize what happened and to what degree. Also we hope that it would never happen again but it happens on a smaller scale as local genocides and as the terror spread out by the militant Muslims. So, this book, as many others, is very important.
But what makes it different, standing out, personal? When I was reading this book I had the feeling that Mr. Silva was very personal. It was not just another thriller with the Israeli secret service and running around the world. There was a painful story in the foundation of the book. This story is so familiar to so many Jews around the world. Every Jewish family had members, who perished during the war and not fighting the enemy but being starved and beaten to death, by being killed in so many ways, by being gassed and burnt and by being violated even after death through the denial of what the Nazis did.
I believe Mr. Silva reached the "best so far" with this book. Keep writing, Mr. Silva. You are on the right way.
Rating:
Summary: Not his best, but still very good.
Review: I have been a hardcore fan of Silva since I discovered his novel "The English Assassin" in the spring of 2002. I was going through a difficult time in my life and his book helped me through it. Since I've re-read all his novels at least twice and must say I was dissapointed this time. Don't get me wrong, this is a well-crafted, intelligent spy yarn that nicely ties up Silva's trilogy, but this one seemed to move slower than usual and the plotting just wasn't very interesting. There is more interesting backstory & drama involving Gabriel's personal life, including things with his mother and the woman in his life, but like I said the actual mystery/spy story in the novel is his weakest yet. I feel that "The English Assassin" is still the best of the three, and they've gone downhill since. Now that Silva has gotten these Holocaust novels out of his system, hopefully he can go back and write something with more thrilling suspense like "The English Assassin" or "The Kill Artist", which in my opinion is his best Gabriel Allon novel.
Rating:
Summary: When do we stop? Never.
Review: Learned historians have argued for years about the cause, loss, destruction and Armageddon-like aspects of the Second World War. Insanity, greed, myopia, good versus evil. One of the more compelling arguments that the storm that gathered which would turn Europe into a giant necropolis was that it was intrinsically evil. More so than in other conflicts dating back to Alexander. And at the heart of that is the death camps.
Hard to explain. It is so horrific as to make the brightest of women and men shudder in attempts to comprehend. Just to understand takes monumental discipline.
Simon Weisenthal, the most known of the Nazi hunters, was once asked if ever we come to the point that we have hunted these monsters of the Reichstag long enough. Weisenthal responded, "never." We must remember. We must have something to remind us. We must never forget.
I'm not sure that the novel is the best forum for that monument. But at times it may be the only forum. Mr. Silva presents a magnetic, riveting novel on the search for a death camp officer who, through a series of believable ironies and misguided assitance escaped detection.
It is a terrifying journey. Not having read the first two parts of the Gabriel Allon saga, I can at least report that "A Death in Vienna" stands on it's own two legs.
Lengthy and haunting, even for an Irish kid from New York born after WWII, it brings tears to your eyes.
Not your usual mystery/adventure. Worth the effort. 5 stars. Larry Scantlebury
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Vienna
Review: My First Silva novel and I guess I expected more. I guess I was looking more of the writing and plot style of Grisham or Clancy. But all in all, I enjoyed the read and will read his other works.
If you're looking for a different and exciting novel, read LUST OF THE FLESH by Beverly Rolyat. A story about district attorney, Nick Allapapalaus, who finds himself caught up in a web of lust, deceit, mystery, suspense, betrayal, murder and sex galore. Is he really the biological father of his ex-wife's promiscuous teenage daughter's infant son? Or has he been set up? A compelling, riveting, engaging, pageturning novel. Enjoy!
|
