Gabriel Allon has gotten older since the last time I read a Daniel Silva novel. The legendary art restorer / assassin is now the head of the Mossad (not called the Mossad in the book) and his opponents in this story are ruthless, powerful men: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump (who are not called Putin or Trump). The Cellist is so closely tied into the real world that, as Silva admits in an afterword, he was forced to re-write the book’s ending following the events in the U.S. Capitol on January 6th this year.

Silva’s a good writer, the book is well researched and well paced. But there was too much, I thought, of the kitchen sink in it. There was art restoration, classical music, dodgy international bankers, references to World War II and the Holocaust, brave journalists, Russian oligarchs, Novichok poisoning, Q-Anon, and more. Many, many characters appear, some with brief walk-on parts, and even the eponymous cellist is not given much of a back story or explanation for her admirable heroism.

Still, any book that casts the Russian President as a modern-day Ernst Stavro Blofeld can’t be all bad, can it? (He does everything but stroke a cat.)