Portrait of a Unknown Woman, Silva - B

                 Gabriel Allon is, at long last, retired from King Saul Blvd. Someone else can now run the Mossad. He is living in Venice, where Chiara is managing a restoration business that Gabriel will eventually work for.  When his long-time English friend, Julian Isherwood asks for assistance because someone from the murky world of forgeries is trying to kill him, Gabriel is off to help. The plan is to infiltrate the underworld by offering for sale four Italian Old Masters paintings - all painted by Gabriel within the last month. A painting is offered to a New York hedge fund specializing in art. The fund, the first of its type and very successful, is a bit of a Ponzi scheme based on first-class forgeries. The bait is taken, an article appears within hours in Vanity Fair, the FBI pursues and the evildoer is soon murdered by one he betrayed. And Gabriel figures out who the forger that the hedge fund relied on is, and persuades him to retire. Very good as always - but lacking the edginess of the past books with prominent national security themes.