A Brief Book Review: The Collector

The Collector

Author: Daniel Silva

Publisher: Harper An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, paperback, 401 pages, including Author’s Note, and Acknowledgments

Reviewed by Rev. Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson

Author

Daniel Silva is a New York Times bestselling author of 25 novels. Many are familiar with his thriller series featuring Gabriel Allon, a spy and art restorer. His novels have been translated into over 30 languages. Silva and his television journalist wife, Jamie Gangel, are the parents of twins, Lily and Nicholas, and they live in Florida. 

Contents

This novel consists of four parts: Part One The Concert, Part Two The Conspiracy, Part Three The Contact, and Part Four The Conclusion. 

The Collector, like most, if not all, of Daniel Silva’s novels has a thrilling plot, involving many characters, and including a number of circumstances, in various places—including Italy, Germany, Denmark, and Russia. It is, like his other novels, a well written page-turner. 

Gabriel Allon supposedly is trying to retire. However, The Concert, by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, and 13 other works of art have been stolen from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Through a series of events, Allon eventually becomes involved with the PET, Denmark’s Security and Intelligence Service. The relationship between DanskOil and RuzNeft is not going well, and the Danes want to end it. It is suspected that one or more Russian political and economic elitists were linked to the theft of Vermeer’s painting. Moreover, Allon and other Western intelligence agencies become aware of a Russian plot to, if successful, potentially start a nuclear war. 

Did Allon and the Western intelligence agencies recover the Vermeer painting, and did they succeed in preventing an apocalyptic nightmare? Read the novel to find out.