The Black Widow

In Daniel Silva's The Black Widow, the 16th installment in the Gabriel Allon military/espionage series,  this novel focused on red-hot real-life events that's ongoing overseas today. For Gabriel Allon, he's a legendary art restorer and Israeli field operative who's supposedly "died" a year ago. But when ISIS attacks the Weinberg Center in France, it was up to him to come up with a plan to stop the known leader of the ISIS caliphate in his tracks. With his sources in Frances, English, USA and Israel, they had gathered intelligence from a ISIS recruiter that appeared valuable to them. And before they knew, ISIS had attacked Amsterdam before it was too late. With a little research, Gabriel found the perfect way to infiltrate ISIS by recruiting a French Palestinian doctor named Natalie Mizrahi. With vigorous training, they transformed her to Dr. Leila Hadawi and made her a "black widow",  a female recruit to mourn the loss of the dead as a suicide bomber. Before she knew it, Leila had been ingrained and met Safia Bourdane, a blonde "black widow" who started those attacks. And with their friendship, Natalie goes to Syria and learns about why they needed her services-later she discovered the real reason: to treat the monster known as Saladin and to gain his confidence by tending to his medical needs. She did that and later learned what he would be up to and the next target would be in the USA. Now it would be up to Natalie to inform Gabriel before it would be too late for the final attack...

This was an amazing and a mesmerizing espionage thriller that deals with real-life issues in current events.  I did care for Gabriel as a newly doted father who was about to embark on a new role, though his first wife Leah was catatonic with the emotional scars of the past twenty years ago. I also cared for Natalie on how she chose to undergo a dangerous operation and risked her life for it. I do see some sparks between her and Mikhail as he cared for her. The vast locations that spread from the Middle East, Europe and the USA were vividly enticing and compelling with every action-packed scenic setting. This would have you at the edge of the seat with non-stop action, suspense, drama and hard-core intrigue.

Will you be there to stop the Black Widow today?