Author Q&A with Daniel Silva

Gabriel Allon — the legendary spy, assassin and future chief of Israeli intelligence — is an elegant man working in a brutal business.

The same can be said of Daniel Silva, who writes the bestselling Gabriel Allon thrillers.

Few authors in the espionage genre handle violent imagery as gracefully as Silva does.

The English Spy, No. 15 in a series that began in 2000, is bursting at the seams with death and brutality. The plot sends Gabriel and colleague Christopher Keller (an English Special Forces soldier-turned-Corsican hit man-turned MI6 agent) on a mission of revenge against an IRA bomber.

But the bloodiest scenes, which most thriller writers might consider to be the good stuff, often take place off the pages of The English Spy.

“I try to do it a different way — and I hope a more satisfying way,” Silva says. “Gabriel, being an artist and an art restorer, gives me license to depict violence in the way that a Renaissance artist might have depicted the martyrdom of a saint, rather than in a gory, almost pornographic way.”

At other times, Silva will set up an explosive situation, let it build in intensity, then fade to black as soon as weapons are drawn. “I let the reader draw his own conclusions about what happens,” he says.

Which isn’t to say that Silva sanitizes the dangerous world in which Allon operates. He just doesn’t make his readers bathe in blood.

We chatted with Silva about The English Spy, which replaces the graphic carnage with dynamic characters, a twist-filled plot and insight into contemporary world affairs.

Gabriel Allon, Israel’s “avenging angel,” is not the title character of The English Spy. Christopher Keller is. Given that Keller was a villain when you originally wrote about him in 2002’s The English Assassin, it has been quite an unlikely journey of redemption, hasn’t it?

In many ways, this is Keller’s book. It closes the loop on Keller’s story. Originally, he was a minor character in Gabriel’s second novel, which I wanted to call The Private Banker, because it was about Swiss banking and World War II, or The Devil’s Sonata, after a violin piece that appears in the novel.

But my publisher said, “We’re going to call the book The English Assassin,” because when Keller came on the page, he popped. He was electric. After that, I let Keller sit for more than a decade until I paired him with Gabriel three books ago and began what became a mini-trilogy.”

Gabriel, who restores paintings by the Old Masters when he’s not involved in spycraft, has essentially made Keller his new restoration project, hasn’t he?

I love that Keller was a villainous character in the first novel and that he has become a new man. It’s the wonderful thing about a long-running series. I get to pluck characters from the past and drop them into new situations. It’s been fun doing that with Keller.

People often ask me, “Did you know 10 years ago that you would write a book where Keller would be working with Gabriel to track down an IRA bomb maker?” I say, “Are you kidding? No way.”

But now Keller stands on the doorstep of starring in his own book. I haven’t made the decision yet whether to write that book. But he’s definitely someone who could stand on his own two feet.

To do that, you’d have to take time away from Gabriel. What if your die-hard Gabriel Allon fans stormed the castle in protest?

It’s going to happen sometime. I feel that I am in the middle of my career. I hope that I can stay healthy enough and that the book industry stays healthy enough that I can write another 20 years.

But I’m not going to be writing Gabriel Allon novels for 20 more years. At some point, the series will come to an end. It’s just a question of when and how many more books.

What inspired you to open this story with the assassination of a hybrid Princess Diana-Kate Middleton character?

I needed to spring a trap for Gabriel and Keller that would get everyone onto the page in a satisfying way. So I chose to assassinate an estranged member of the British royal family.

But I am in no way suggesting that Diana was assassinated. The death of Lord Mountbatten [killed by an IRA bomber in 1979] is actually the true inspiration for that opening passage.

From there, you lead us on a story that involves unrest in Northern Ireland, Iran’s efforts to become a nuclear power and a growing threat from Russia. Readers might pick up the book for escapist entertainment, but they’ll wind up better educated about the real world.

That’s not what I’m trying to do. But when writing about a character like Eamon Quinn, the villain, I have to explain who he is and where comes from and why he does the things he does.

So it’s a tricky balancing act. I want to drop in the necessary amounts of background material and history to make a piece comprehensible. But it shouldn’t feel like an entry in Encyclopædia Britannica.

The main thing I want is to tell it in an exciting and compelling fashion.

Would you give up your career as a bestselling espionage novelist if it meant you could live in a world where nations didn’t spy on, plot against and go to war with one another?

I would happily make that trade. As my man Elvis Costello said, “What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding?”

This story was originally published July 1, 2015 at 11:27 AM with the headline "Author Q&A with Daniel Silva."