For Silva fans who have followed Gabriel Allon cavorting across the globe on the trail of Islamic terrorists (The New Girl, 2019) but who have longed for the Israeli superspy to return to his first love, painting and art restoration, it's time to get your brushes ready. This one's for you. Now retired as chief of Israeli intelligence, Allon is settling into his new life as a restorer of Old Masters, working for his wife, Chiarra, and living in Venice. Then his old friend and occasional asset in espionage, London gallery owner Julian Isherwood, comes calling with a problem: a painting that he and his partner, Sarah Bancroft (also a former Allon ally) recently sold for millions, Portrait of an Unknown Woman, attributed to Dutch master Anthony Van Dyck, has had its provenance challenged. If the work is a fraud, Isherwood and Bancroft will be ruined. Allon, who still can't resist the clarion call of intrigue, is soon setting up another elaborate sting operation, aimed this time not at a terrorist but at the world's greatest art forger and at the money man who uses the forgeries to fuel a Ponzi scheme. To lure these wily flies into his web, Allon must do a spot of forgery himself, creating four impeccable paintings that purport to be by Italian masters and thereby forcing his "rival" out of hiding. The plot unwinds through Silva's now-established pattern: Allon gathers his team (drawing on former colleagues in the Israeli secret service), identifies a weak link (in this case, the broker who handles the sale of the forged paintings), and forces that person to sell out the targets. The scheme is a doozy, but the real draw here is the meticulously detailed look at the art of the forger (creating seemingly ancient canvasses and stretchers and, especially, duplicating the pattern of "craquelure," the way a particular painter's canvasses age and, over time, crack). Behind it all is the dirty little secret that "no one really knows whether all the beautiful works of art hanging in the world's greatest museums are genuine or fakes." Is that true? In Allon's world, it is.

Here's more international intrigue from the No. 1 New York Times best-selling Silva; with a 500,000-copy first printing.

Silva's latest Gabriel Allon novel is a bit of a throwback--in the best possible way. One-time assassin and legendary spymaster Gabriel Allon has finally retired. After saying farewell to his friends and colleagues in Israel, he moves with his wife, Chiara, and their two young children to a piano nobile overlooking Venice's Grand Canal. His plan is to return to the workshop where he learned to restore paintings as an employee--but only after he spends several weeks recovering from the bullet wound that left him dead for several minutes in The Cellist (2021). Of course, no one expects Gabriel to entirely withdraw from the field, and, sure enough, a call from his friend and occasional asset Julian Isherwood sends him racing around the globe on the trail of art forgers who are willing to kill to protect their extremely lucrative enterprise. Silva provides plenty of thrills and, as usual, offers a glimpse into the lifestyles of the outrageously wealthy. In the early books in this series, it was Gabriel's work as an art restorer that set him apart from other action heroes, and his return to that world is the most rewarding part of this installment. It is true that, at this point in his storied career, Gabriel has become a nearly mythic figure. And Silva is counting on a lot of love--and willing suspension of disbelief--when Gabriel whips up four old master canvases that fool the world's leading art experts as a lure for the syndicate selling fake paintings. That said, as Silva explains in an author's note, the art market is rife with secrecy, subterfuge, and wishful thinking, in no small part because it is almost entirely unregulated. And, if anyone can crank out a Titian, a Tintoretto, a Gentileschi, and a Veronese in a matter of days, it's Gabriel Allon. The author's longtime fans may breathe a sigh of relief that this entry is relatively free of politics and the pandemic is nowhere in sight. A smart summer escape. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.