The Cellist by Daniel Silva.
I love Gabriel but this book is complex to review. The plot is standard Gabriel, a complicated plot to take down some bad guys but the motivation for the involvement of the Israeli covert operations is weak, just personal for Gabriel. He is usually more analytic.
Thus, that drags.
The book then veers to Trump. It is clear that it has editorial content as fiction that Trump is/was not a good president to say the least. Now if you are ok with that, fine. If you are a true believer, you will go hair on fire and run around a bit.
Reviews argue that Gabriel is suffering from too many book syndrome.
Next - the latest from Stuart Woods. I used to enjoy Stone Barrington as an amusing guy. This book makes his into a cold blooded murderer to solve his problems along with Dino (a police chief of NYC) as a clear co-conspirator. It really destroys the moral structure of the character. Stone was never pure but this is too far. While his actions caused some folks to meet their ends, it was more indirect. This is planning a murder.
Latest Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers team up - so, so. It was a terrible mistake to make Lucas a marshal. It removed him from a colorful milieu in MN and now his cases are rather forced. I sense he is being put out to pasture with Virgil taking over as the main part of the franchise.
Didn't like the last Mitch Rapp either. Hard to get through.
I have read a lot of Stone Barrington and consider it light entertainment. If Woods wants him to run amuck, let him go.
I agree that Lucas Davenport as a lone wolf pick his cases us marshal is far fetched.
Note that the next from Sandford has Letty Davenport as the lead.
Code Name: JET STREAM
Letty is a great character. From her taking on a rogue cop with a single shot 22S as a little girl to her one armed wounded take down of two cartel assassins with a 1911, she is a tough young woman and the latter is a great scene. Speaks for training!
She has a touch of Lucas' sociopathic world view of dealing with bad people. Lucas could fade into the background. Should she become an entry level LEO or something else? Interesting choices.
Stone lost a bit of his edge when he became super rich, I opine.
Don't want to spoil the Silva book but in it he hints at treason at the highest US levels.
X Troop: The Secret Jewish Commandos of World War II
One revelation: When it came to petty-ass cruelties inflicted on Jewish refugees, the British were on par with the Gestapo. When a train with some refugees (with proper papers) was approaching the border, the Germans would throw the refugees' luggage out the windows of the train. Or, when stopped for the border, the Germans would make the Jews get off the train, put their bags on the platform and then open them up. The Germans would scatter their stuff around and then tell them they could go an signal the train to pull out, so that the refugees would have to leave their things behind.
On ships carrying refugees from Britain to Ireland or Australia, the soldiers acting as guards would throw refugees' belongings over the side. Many of them arrived at the refugee camps with only the clothes on their backs.
But I couldn't get into this book. Something felt....off. I closed it after about eighty pages and dropped it back off at the library,
If we have to march off into the next world, let us walk there on the bodies of our enemies.
A happier anecdote...
A friend I grew up with...his father a British soldier in WWII, liberated his mother, a young Polish internee, from Bergen Belsen. They were (mostly) happily married for decades afterward. She always (understandably) seemed dour, while he was always quick with a joke and found the lighter side of things. A nicer man you'd never meet.
RIP Leon.