Reading order
| # | Title | Year | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Kill Artist | 2000 | Buy |
| 2 | The English Assassin | 2002 | Buy |
| 3 | The Confessor | 2003 | Buy |
| 4 | A Death in Vienna | 2004 | Buy |
| 5 | Prince of Fire | 2005 | Buy |
| 6 | The Messenger | 2006 | Buy |
| 7 | The Secret Servant | 2007 | Buy |
| 8 | Moscow Rules | 2008 | Buy |
| 9 | The Defector | 2009 | Buy |
| 10 | The Rembrandt Affair | 2010 | Buy |
| 11 | Portrait of a Spy | 2011 | Buy |
| 12 | The Fallen Angel | 2012 | Buy |
| 13 | The English Girl | 2013 | Buy |
| 14 | The Heist | 2014 | Buy |
| 15 | The English Spy | 2015 | Buy |
| 16 | The Black Widow | 2016 | Buy |
| 17 | House of Spies | 2017 | Buy |
| 18 | The Other Woman | 2018 | Buy |
| 19 | The New Girl | 2019 | Buy |
| 20 | The Order | 2020 | Buy |
| 21 | The Cellist | 2021 | Buy |
| 22 | Portrait of an Unknown Woman | 2022 | Buy |
| 23 | The Collector | 2023 | Buy |
| 24 | A Death in Cornwall | 2024 | Buy |
| 25 | The House of Silk | 2025 | Buy |
Gabriel Allon is an art restorer. He’s also an Israeli intelligence operative, trained as an assassin, haunted by his past, and repeatedly pulled back into fieldwork by his country’s needs. Daniel Silva created him in 2000 with The Kill Artist, launching a series that now spans over two decades.
The dual identity defines the character. Allon restores damaged paintings with meticulous care, spending months on a single canvas. He kills with similar precision. Silva uses this contrast to explore what it costs to do violence, even justified violence, over a lifetime. Allon carries the weight of everyone he’s killed.
The plots blend real geopolitics with thriller conventions. Silva researches extensively, setting books against actual events: the Syrian civil war, Russian interference in elections, the Vatican’s secrets, Islamic terrorism, the art world’s shadow economy. The series has addressed the Iranian nuclear program, the rise of ISIS, and Russian oligarchs years before these topics dominated headlines.
Allon’s team recurs throughout the series. His wife Chiara, his handler Ari Shamron, his tech expert Eli Lavon, and others form a found family of spies. Their relationships evolve across books, giving the series emotional continuity beyond the plot-of-the-year.
Silva writes one Gabriel Allon novel per year, typically released in July. The reliability has built a devoted readership who follow the series as an annual ritual.