Fictional tale packed with explosive truth

DANIEL Silva writes from history and from experience. He has witnessed the devastation of bombing in Northern Ireland and has worked as a correspondent in the Middle East.

When readers pick up The English Spy, Silva’s latest fiction novel built around real events in his series with Israeli spy, assassin and occasional art restorer Gabriel Allon at its heart, they will read of the violent death of an English princess when a luxury yacht is bombed.

Readers might think of Princess Diana, who died in a tragic road accident in Paris. They might also recall the death of one of the Queen’s relatives, Lord Mountbatten, who perished when his fishing boat was bombed by the IRA.

The bombing in this story is the opening gambit in a clash of old enemies, with the people responsible using the death of a royal as just one step towards their plan to even old scores.

One of the ultimate targets is Allon, who is preparing to take over as head of an Israeli spy and security organisation known as The Office. AUTHOR: Daniel Silva PUBLISHER: HarperCollins RRP: $29.99

But while fictional operators out of Russia, Iran and Ireland are setting traps in the pursuit of Allon and another of Silva’s intriguing characters, former SAS commando and occasional hitman Christopher Keller, the author himself has his own targets firmly in his sights.

One of them is “The Boss’’, Russian leader Vladimir Putin whom Silva describes as a kleptocrat with “no philosophy other than the cynical exercise of power’’.

Silva says Putin would like nothing more than to see the complete collapse of NATO so he can reconstitute Russia’s lost empire without the meddlesome West standing in his way.

Last November, as Brisbane prepared to host the G20 leaders summit, Putin ordered a convoy of heavily armed warships to sail from Vladivostok to the Coral Sea.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott tried to shrug it off publicly as “just part of freedom of navigation’’, but Australia and the Western world saw it for what it was – Putin trying to stand over our nation as it hosted this important meeting, furious at Abbott’s stated plan to “shirtfront’’ him over the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, which was shot down by a Russian-supplied missile as it flew over Ukraine.

As Silva says in his author’s notes on The English Spy, Allon first matched wits with Russia in Moscow Rules, published in 2008 when Moscow was awash with oil revenues and critics of the Kremlin were being killed in the streets.

“Unfortunately, the novel proved to be prescient,’’ he says. “Consider the Kremlin’s behaviour of late. It has stood by a murderous client regime in Syria.

“It has agreed to sell sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles to Iran.

“Crimea and eastern Ukraine are under Russian control.

“Nuclear-armed Russian bombers are buzzing NATO allies…’’

In The English Spy, old wounds are reopened as Allon and Keller revisit Omagh in Northern Ireland.

In August 1998 a car bombing there killed 29 people and injured more than 200.

Specific details of that outrage as they appear in the novel are accurate, but of course the actions of fictitious characters in the book relating

The incident is reminiscent of an actual event. Readers

might think of Princess Diana, who died in a tragic road

accident in Paris

to that event are just that: fiction.

However, what is factual – according to British intelligence – is that just like one of the characters in the book, former IRA bombmakers went out into the world after an end came to “The Troubles’’ and sold their expertise.

Silva said in an interview he was in Northern Ireland in 1998, the year of the Omagh bombing.

“I saw the scene of a bombing a few hours after it happened. They destroyed the high street with one of these car bombs,’’ he said.

“Belfast was just so sad and tense and horrible during the war. The communities were at each other’s throats. If you walked down the wrong street, you could get killed.’’

VERDICT: Fast pace and well-informed.