Portrait of an unknown woman [LP] : a novel (Gabriel Allon series 22.)
by Silva, Daniel, 1960- (Author)
Series
Summary
"Legendary spy and art restorer Gabriel Allon has at long last severed ties with Israeli intelligence and settled quietly in Venice, the only place where he has ever truly known peace. His beautiful wife, Chiara, has taken over the day-to-day management of the Tiepolo Restoration Company, and their... Full description
Summary: |
"Legendary spy and art restorer Gabriel Allon has at long last severed ties with Israeli intelligence and settled quietly in Venice, the only place where he has ever truly known peace. His beautiful wife, Chiara, has taken over the day-to-day management of the Tiepolo Restoration Company, and their two young children are discreetly enrolled in a neighborhood scuola elementare. For his part, Gabriel spends his days wandering the streets and canals of the watery city, bidding farewell to the demons of his tragic, violent past. But when the eccentric London art dealer Julian Isherwood asks Gabriel to investigate the circumstances surrounding the rediscovery and lucrative sale of a centuries-old painting, he is drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse where nothing is as it seems. Gabriel soon discovers that the work in question, a portrait of an unidentified woman attributed to Sir Anthony van Dyck, is almost certainly a fiendishly clever fake. To find the mysterious figure who painted it--and uncover a multibillion-dollar fraud at the pinnacle of the art world--Gabriel conceives one of the most elaborate deceptions of his career. If it is to succeed, he must become the very mirror image of the man he seeks: the greatest art forger the world has ever known. Stylish, sophisticated, and ingeniously plotted, Portrait of an Unknown Woman is a wildly entertaining journey through the dark side of the art world--a place where unscrupulous dealers routinely deceive their customers and deep-pocketed investors treat great paintings as though they were just another asset class to be bought and sold at a profit. From its elegant opening to the shocking twists of its climax, the novel is a tour de force of storytelling and one of the finest pieces of heist fiction ever written. And it is still more proof that, when it comes to international intrigue and suspense, Daniel Silva has no equal"-- |
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Physical Description: |
598 pages (large print) ; 23 cm. |
ISBN: |
9780062835161 0062835165 |
Author Notes: |
He was working at CNN when his first novel, The Unlikely Spy, was published. In 1997. He then left CNN to become a full-time author. His novels include The Fallen Angel, The English Girl, The Other Woman, and other titles in the Gabriel Allon series. He won the Barry Award for Best Thriller for The Messenger in 2006. In 2014 he made The New York Times Best Seller List with The Heist and The English Spy made the list in 2015. The Black Widow is his latest bestseller. (Bowker Author Biography) |