"The Black Widow" by Daniel Silva

Completed book 25 July 2016.

One of Silva's best. I thought the series was getting a little tired with the last offerings, "English Girl," and English Spy."

This one is very contemporary. Highly informative on ISIS and its methods. The Israelis insert a female spy into the ISIS apparatus. They want to find out who is leading a recent rash of bombings, most notably Paris and Amsterdam, where ISIS claims responsibility.

Gabriel Allon gets deeply involved because the Paris bombing killed a good friend of his, the woman who headed the leading anti semitism organization in France.

The book goes in depth on a number of contemporary issues.

Anti semitism in Europe.

The nature of ISIS attraction of young Europeans into its apparatus. Training programs. Indoctrination programs... etc.

Silva, it seems to me believes that ISIS is not a Jay Vee organization. There is a high level of sophistication, along with beheadings, antiquities destruction (some of the action occurs in Palmyra), in ISIS use of internet, videography, and publishing.

Silva's post script take on the why of current events is interesting:

I did my utmost to explain the roots and explosive growth of ISIS accurately and dispassionately, though I am confident that, given America's divided and increasingly dysfunctional politics, some will quibble with my portrayal. There is no doubt that the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003 created the seedbed from which ISIS sprang. And there is also no doubt that the failure to leave a residual American force in Iraq in 2011, combined with the outbreak of civil war in Syria, allowed the group to flourish and spread on two sides of an increasingly meaningless border. To dismiss the group as "un Islamic" or "not a state" is wishful thinking and, ultimately, counterproductive and dangerous. As the journalist and scholar Graeme Wood pointed out in a groundbreaking study of ISIS published in the Atlantic: "The reality is that the Islamc State is Islamic. Very Islamic." And it is rapidly taking on many functions of a modern state, issuing its citizenry everything from driver's permits to fishing licenses.

I am a sucker for Silva. I love Allon, who stands with Jack Reacher as one of the icons of contemporary thriller fiction.