Books : The Confessor

Rating: - A thriller all the way to the very last page.
This is the third book in a series and Silva finally has done everything right even including a good ending. It not only has many twists and turns but has some great surprises; many of them just when you think you have it all figured out. Each layer as it is uncovered brings more questions than answers but art restorer and sometimes spy, Gabriel Allon keeps searching for the answer to who killed his childhood friend and more important why?

I thought I was well versed on the holocaust but the way Silva interspersed this history as the plot unfolds made it clear how it all happened. It was like there were two stories playing out as I was reading. A must read for anyone that is looking for a book that just can't be put aside until the last page has been flipped.

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Rating: - The Vatican as evil empire
While all of Silva's novels essentially have the same plot: a struggle between virtuous Israelis and evil Arabs, this one has the Vatican in its center. Silva, for all his disclaimers, knows as we all should that the Catholic Church is probably the most evil institution and the oldest evil institution in our history -- certainly the most evil after the Nazi SS.
The Vatican and its personnel claim a spiritual power but their power is simply the power of evil domination over ignorant billions of people. The Vatican's collabortion with Hitler in the demise of Europe's Jews is controversial but clear: the Church had no interest in saving the Jews, whom it regarded as the enemies of the Church. And it was correct: the Jews have been hated by Christians for 2000 years because the Jews knew that the Christians had fabricated a Jesus who never existed: a divine son of God dying to save sinners. The real Jesus was an apocalyptic Jew who died defying Rome. The Jews have been uncomfortable for Christians from Paul of Tarsus to Adolf Hitler. Period.

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Rating: - "Bring me the file on The Leopard."
(4.5 stars) The Leopard, an assassin who figures in a number of Silva novels, becomes a major player in this third Gabriel Allon novel, about the passive involvement of the Vatican in the Holocaust and its subsequent denial of all responsibility. Basing the novel on research by scholars like Susan Zuccotti (whom Silva credits in his acknowledgments) into the secret connections between factions within the Catholic Church and the Third Reich, Silva creates a chilling and utterly compelling story about the reasons that the Vatican might have feared the Jews were a threat to its own power and wanted to prevent the ultimate establishment of an Israeli homeland.

Gabriel Allon, an assassin for the Israeli Mossad (in his secret life) and a talented restorer of paintings and sculptures in Venice, often for the Vatican (in his public life as Mario Delvecchio), is working in Venice when he receives word that Ben Stern, the son of his Israeli mentor Ari Shamron, has been murdered in Munich while researching a book. The subject of his book is so secret that not even his Munich university department head knows what it is. Gabriel leaves Venice for Munich and discovers nothing, though phone records suggest that Ben has been investigating a secret church conference that took place at a convent in Brenzone, Italy, during the Holocaust.

Further investigation brings Allon into contact with members of Crux Vera, an ultra-conservative organization within the church, with their leaders well entrenched in positions of power close to the Pope. These must publicly hide their involvement because the new, liberal Pope Paul VII is anxious for transparency and reconciliation with the Jews. When the Pope decides to attend a meeting with the head of a Rome synagogue to express his regrets for any Vatican failures in responding to the Holocaust, the Crux Vera goes into action, contacting The Leopard to be sure that their involvement is never discovered.

Silva's use of recent research to give veracity to the plot and his sensitivity to the various political influences at play create incredible tension. Allon, Shamron, and the supporting characters, many of them Catholic church luminaries, come to life and develop as the action evolves. Allon is a sympathetic protagonist, despite his violent actions to protect the interests of the Israelis, and his sense of honor shines through, even as he kills his enemies with seeming impunity. Ultimately, Silva creates a fascinating historical atmosphere and fills his novel with accurate historical research showing the complicity of some church luminaries to prevent the establishment of a Jewish homeland. n Mary Whipple

Moscow Rules
Prince of Fire
A Death in Vienna
The Marching Season

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Rating: - Need An Assassin? Here's My Card
Ben Stern is a Jewish scholar living and working in Munich. On sabbatical, he is murdered while working on a book. With his death, the manuscript is nowhere to be found and nobody seems to know what it was about. Gabriel Allon is called upon to investigate. As the story progresses, Gabriel must uncover a conspiracy in the Curia, learnthe truth about Nazi collaborators, save a new pope's life, and get an elusive assassin known as the Leopard.

THE CONFESSOR is a first-rate espionage thriller complete with convoluted plot, fast action, beautiful woman, and engaging characters. The issue of Vatican inaction during the Holocaust and the opening of papal archives from that period is a real one and provides an interesting backdrop to Silva's story.

My main complaint about this book, and the reason I didn't give it five stars, involves the ending. As THE CONFESSOR comes to a close, everything is tied up neatly except that the Leopard has gotten away. That's fine if you're going to follow it up elsewhere, such as keep him for another book. Instead, the author tacks on a two-page final chapter (what amounts to a very brief epilogue), in which he disposes of the Leopard without any fanfare whatever. It's as if Silva ran out of paper. It reads as though the character, who was reputedly so elusive that there were no pictures of him and his identity was a mystery, handed out cards with his name, address, phone number, and ID picture on them as he fled the scene near the end of the story.

Aside from what struck me as a letdown at the very end, I thought THE CONFESSOR was a fine book. It's not Silva's first story to feature Allon, so I'll go back and begin at the start, but I will definitely be reading more of this guy's work. I recommend this one.

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Rating: - Forgive us our trespasses....
"The Confessor", part of the Holocaust trilogy featuring Israeli spy Gabriel Allon once again delivers excitement, intrigue, human drama, and superb historical interest. The fictional Pope of "The Confessor" is the target of a plot within the Vatican intended to silence him because of his desire to confess the sins of the Church during the Holocaust. His impassioned words brought me to tears.