Completed September 9, 2026. Silva’s Ransom opens as a sophisticated disappearance mystery set among Britain’s privileged elite, then steadily widens into an international espionage thriller shaped by Russian influence, compromised wealth, artificial intelligence, and modern drone technology. The twenty-sixth Gabriel Allon novel is accessible even to readers unfamiliar with the series. Four former Cambridge classmates

Starting with this book, I’m going to review thrillers here on the blog. I read in the genre I write — political and espionage thrillers — so these are one novelist’s reads of another’s work: what the writer got right, and what I took from it. No star ratings, just the review. First up, The