The Other Woman: A Novel

The Other Woman is the latest entry in Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon series. This time, the protagonist, Israeli superspy Gabriel Allon, is facing the Russians. The topic of Russia for Silva is nothing new. Russia featured prominently in his earlier books, such as The Moscow Vector. This time, however, Russia is resurgent. Gabriel receives a letter from a woman. He learns that she is writing a memoir detailing her falling in love with a dangerous man who kidnapped her child. As Gabriel digs deeper, he learns that the stakes have never been higher than before. His trail leads him to Vienna, Austria, where a Russian man who has been working with Mossad offers to give up some valuable information. However, as Gabriel and his team arrive in Vienna and are about to bring him in, he is killed by unknown assailants. Gabriel’s suspicion that he is dealing with a very sinister plot are confirmed right there and then. Now, he and his team must do whatever they can to flush out a mole in MI6 who has been supplying the Russians with the West’s secrets and prevent an all-out confrontation that has a very real possibility to start World War III.

The Other Woman doesn’t disappoint those who like action. There is definitely lots of it throughout the book. The plot is very tense and the action starts almost immediately, so the reader feels hooked from the book’s first pages. Also, Silva weaves the state of the world today, as the novel is full of allusions to current events. With lots of political machinations and intrigue, The Other Woman is perhaps Silva’s strongest book to date. Likewise, Silva doesn’t skimp on character development. It’s very clear that Gabriel is driven by his deep sense of loyalty to his country. Over the course of eighteen novels, Daniel Silva still continues to develop his character quite deftly, which is somewhat of a rarity for serial novels, particularly for those with more than ten books in a series.