Christmas in February???

“We worry about our children until the day we die.”  Truth.

28.12 Portrait of a Spy

Gabriel Allon and all his partners in crime are like old friends. I see them once a year; some details of previous adventures are familiar while others you have completely forgotten. Some memories are sad and some happy. They are good folk, and this year I almost missed the party!

As I wrote last year, Silvia's new Allon books came out in July, usually a new hardback and a new paperback on the same day.  I always celebrate by buying the paperback and knowing there will be another waiting for me in a year. For some reason the last book came out in February and I had no idea!  I mean, what I like about old friends is that I can count on them to always be the same - I feel betrayed!  Well, that is overstating it a bit, but I do feel out of sorts reading Allon in May, and as a used book nonetheless!  Oddly, it also ended up not being a great read for me, and it took me almost a week to read when usually I read Allon in two days.  The other funny part is that because it came out at an odd time I was convinced I had read it before and almost didn’t buy it.  The summary on the back just felt so familiar…

Frankly, that was the sense I had the whole time reading this. It does feel done before, because it has been done before. I was hoping for something new but that just wasn’t the case.  It was still a good and tense read, but I didn’t feel for a moment like I didn’t know exactly what was coming next.  And in general I was right.  Maybe I have read too many of these…  Who am I kidding – can’t wait until next July!