House of spies by Daniel Silva

"House of spies" by Daniel Silva.

This book is published by HarperCollins in 2017 and has 715 pages. This is Book 17 of Gabriel Allon series. 

Christopher Keller has become a good guy and is recruited by MI6. Gabriel is trying to balance as head of Israel's secret service and his family. When Gabriel and head of Alfa task-force of French DGSI investigate a French tycoon an attempt is made on Gabriel's life. Vengeance on Saladin is in order. 

Where is Saladin? What's the connection of French tycoon? Will Gabriel lead from front or from control room?

Saladin escaped in last book. He is wrecking terror in Europe with multiple bomb blasts. Gabriel hatches an elaborate plot, costing half a billion dollars, to snare JLM and reach Saladin.

The story takes place mainly in England, France and Morocco. Its a rare case of collaboration between Israeli, American, British and French intelligence agencies. A lot of emphasis is on humint (human intelligence) and sigint (signal or electronic intelligence).

Story is interesting.  Narration is good. Characterization is decent. When the main objective of the mission is achieved, a secondary threat, and a major one, is unleashed. Gabriel and Christopher deal with it. But would Britain allow as Israeli spy to operate on it's soil officially and agree that it does not have good agents, in reality? 

The book also fails to reveal who exploded the bombs to kill Gabriel, what the motive was and how did they pull it off? The title of this book has very little relevance to the story. The name could have been anything else.

It's typically Israeli philosophy of elimination without mercy. Remember the revenge of Munich Olympic killings? Gabriel has to get to Saladin to kill three birds in one stone. In reality he kills many birds in one stone. 

When the story ends, book doesn't end. It continues and drags on and on unnecessarily. This overshadows the effect of a good climax. Deleting these pages would have done a lot of good to this book.

Why did I read this book? Author. 

What I didn't like? Dragged end.

What did I like? Character of Gabriel, spy with a conscience. 

A very good book. Recommend reading.