Look, the Gabriel Allon series is fun, and Silva is a talented author. But he's running into the same problem that all long-running series authors run into: you keep needing to up the stakes, and you end up with less and less reality. Inevitably, if your hero is in intelligence, you're gonna save the world from nuclear destruction. Allon does. With typical aplomb. When you're on book #23 of a series, I guess you're not aiming for a lot of surprises.

Silva's writing remains high quality, but his plots have begun to suffer, as any series will when stretched on through a dozen books. Not bad, but not great.