"The Order" by Daniel Silva

Above: "The Order" - Daniel Silva - 435 pages.

In "The Order," Silva transitions from previous novels' focus on Israeli spymaster Gabriel Allon's fight against Islamic terror, to intrigue within the Catholic Church.

I completed reading the above book today.

In "The Order," Silva transitions from previous novels' focus on Israeli spymaster Gabriel Allon's fight against Islamic terror, to intrigue within the Catholic Church.

Allon's Italian born, Jewish wife, Chiara, his passion for Masters painting restoration, and previous dealings with the papacy, make him somewhat of a well known player in the eyes of the Italian elite... Church and state. That's why the head of Israeli intelligence, while vacationing with his famy in Venice, is called by a Church insider to out the plot that resulted in the murder of a Pope, and, to prevent the bought and paid for takeover of the Catholic Church by a very well funded, anti semitic, right wing, Church order. The scheme to pay off Cardinals to vote for a certain new Pope, loyal to the right wing order, is funded by a right wing German industrialist with a record of sympathy towards the holocaust.

The right wingers are impelled to gain control of the papacy because of the putative discovery of an original account of the Christ's crucifixion by none other than Pontius Pilate himself. In the long, lost narrative, Pilate affirms, that he, as the Roman authority in Palestine, was solely responsible for sentencing Christ to death. This revelation coming to light in modern times would, of course, contradict the two millennia old narrative that Christ was put to death by the Jewish Sanhedrin. That Jews were responsible for Christ's death, so that narrative goes; that gave rise to Christian persecution of the Jews, leading to the holocaust, and to ongoing anti-Semitism in the current day. The right wing Catholic order can't let a document that would exonerate the Jews of causing Christ's death, see the light of day. So, they must kill the current Pope, genuinely curious about the Pilate manuscript, and invest their own lackey Pope to keep the new scripture's earth shaking revelation suppressed.

"The Order," of course, is a work of fiction. But, reading between the lines, it seems clear that Silva views the far right as a greater danger to Jews today than burgeoning anti-Semitism coming from the left, of which he makes no mention in the novel.

Writing about the history of Christian persecution of the Jews is new literary territory for Silva. Silva inserts into the novel quite a bit of historical background on the early Christian period to support his hypotheses, and, for that reason, in addition to the pleasure of reading Silva's taut, fast paced, page turning fiction, the novel is enlightening for its historical input.

If coming up with something new is important to keep the Allon franchise alive and vital, Silva seems to have accomplished that here. Lee Child, my other favorite thriller writer, in contrast, has failed at this, as each of his new novels seems a rehash of the last one.