First line in the book: Pyotr Luzhkov was about to be killed and for that he was grateful.
I thought I would give this complete and unabridged audio book from itunes a try as a change from reading hardbacks/paperbacks. Gareth Armstrong's soothing voice read to me on my iPad. He expressed the appropriate level of drama and adjusted his tone to suit each situation and never went overboard for the given situation. He is an excellent narrator.
Ivan Kharkov is back. In Moscow Rules, Allon made the mistake of leaving the most dangerous man in the world alive and so, in the follow-up The Defector, Ivan Kharvov is back for vengeance. Kharkov has set up a special unit within his personal security service and the unit has been given a special assignment - find his wife and children and kill everyone who get in the way, especially Allon. The trail of vengeance begins with the disappearance of a former Russian intelligence officer, Colonel Grigori Bulganov, in mysterious circumstances. Allon has been called back from his honeymoon in Umbria to find the colonel who had saved his life twice. As the book rightly puts it, The Defector is a "searing tale of love, vengeance and courage."
These youtube videos show Silva talking about The Defector, Gabriel Allon, Henry Winkler's advice and Russia's past.
This book is written in a flowing and artistic style which makes for a highly entertaining and compulsive read. Even though it is a work of fiction but everytime I read the Gabriel Allon series, it feels like realism, like catching up with a newspaper front-page headlines on the world of intelligence and terror. I know that Allon is getting on a bit in his years but I hope that there are a few more books to come in this series because I have yet to find one book of Silva's that does not live up to its reputation. As long as Silva writes, I will read. I will be reading The Rembrandt Affair next.
Rating: 4/5 (Prefer books to audiobooks)
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