Gabriel Allon #12
Harper
July 2012
On Sale: July 17, 2012
Featuring: Gabriel Allon
432 pages ISBN: 0062073125 EAN: 9780062073129 Kindle: B0070XQDRO Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
After narrowly surviving his last operation, Gabriel Allon,
the wayward son of Israeli intelligence, has taken refuge
behind the walls of the Vatican, where he is restoring one
of Caravaggio's greatest masterpieces. But early one morning
he is summoned to St. Peter's Basilica by Monsignor Luigi
Donati, the all-powerful private secretary to His Holiness
Pope Paul VII. The body of a beautiful woman lies broken
beneath Michelangelo's magnificent dome. The Vatican police
suspect suicide, though Gabriel believes otherwise. So, it
seems, does Donati. But the monsignor is fearful that a
public inquiry might inflict another scandal on the Church,
and so he calls upon Gabriel to quietly pursue the
truth—with one caveat.
"Rule number one at the Vatican," Donati said. "Don't ask
too many questions."
Gabriel learns that the dead woman had uncovered a dangerous
secret—a secret that threatens a global criminal enterprise
that is looting timeless treasures of antiquity and selling
them to the highest bidder. But there is more to this
network than just greed. A mysterious operative is plotting
an act of sabotage that will plunge the world into a
conflict of apocalyptic proportions. . . .
An intoxicating blend of art, intrigue, and history, The
Fallen Angel moves swiftly from the cloistered chambers of
the Vatican to the glamorous ski slopes of St. Moritz to the
graceful avenues of Berlin and Vienna—and, finally, to a
shocking climax beneath the world's most sacred and
contested parcel of land. Each setting in this extraordinary
novel is rendered with the care of an Old Master, as are the
spies, lovers, priests, and thieves who inhabit its pages.
It is a story of faith and of the destructive power of
secrets—and an all too timely reminder that those who cannot
remember the past are condemned to repeat it.