A Death in Cornwall

A Death in Cornwall is the 24th installment of Silva’s Gabriel Allon series and the fifth novel in the series to be set in Cornwall. The first novel in the series is The Kill Artist. In this book, Gabriel goes by the alias Giovanni Rossi and meets Timothy Peel when he is a troubled youth. Their relationship leads to Timothy becoming a police officer, a job that he has held for eight years at the start of A Death in Cornwall. In the second novel of the series, The English Assassin, Don Anton Orsati sends Christopher Keller to kill Gabriel. Christopher doesn’t go through with the murder and instead becomes close friends with Gabriel. In A Death in Cornwall, Timothy and Christopher save Gabriel’s life. The signadora is another Corsican character who first appears in The English Assassin. She and Orsati appear in various other books, such as The English Girl, before rejoining Gabriel in A Death in Cornwall. Anna Rolfe also appears for the first time in The English Assassin. The death of her father, who stole art from Jewish people during the Holocaust, connects her to Gabriel’s ongoing efforts to recover paintings and artifacts taken by the Nazis.

Gabriel is married to Chiara, whom he first meets in the third book of the series, The Confessor, but they do not become romantically involved until later in the series. Early in the series, Gabriel’s first wife, Leah Allon, is traumatized by the death of their son and has to be committed to a psychiatric hospital. Later, Gabriel marries Chiara in The Secret Servant, the seventh book in the series. Chiara also works for Mossad and rescues Gabriel in The Confessor. The tables are turned in The Defector, the ninth book in the series, and Gabriel has to rescue Chiara from her kidnappers. During her captivity, she is forced to have an abortion. Eventually, she and Gabriel have twins, who are eight years old in A Death in Cornwall. Over the course of the series, as predicted by the signadora, Christopher also finds love. He marries Sarah Bancroft in the 18th book in the series, The Other Woman.

In The Secret Servant, the seventh book in the series, Gabriel works with Graham Seymour, a deputy of MI5, for the first time to thwart a terrorist attack. Graham is a frequent contact of Gabriel when he operates in the UK throughout the series, including in A Death in Cornwall. In the 12th book, The Fallen Angel, Gabriel meets Christoph Bittle, the head of Swiss counterterrorism. Christoph introduces Gabriel to the Geneva Freeport in House of Spies, the 17th book, and the Freeport is one of the locations Gabriel infiltrates in A Death in Cornwall. The other law enforcement officer that Gabriel works with in A Death in Cornwall is Jacques Menard. He initially appears in Portrait of an Unknown Woman, the 22nd book, where he provides a connection to the French art market in Gabriel’s investigation of forged paintings in Venice. Naomi Wallach is also introduced in Portrait of an Unknown Woman, as she is involved with the repatriation of stolen art and identification of forgeries. However, she and Gabriel meet in person for the first time in A Death In Cornwall.

In The English Girl, the 13th installment in the series, Gabriel meets Samantha Cooke and Prime Minister Lancaster. Samantha is an English journalist who covers the death of Prime Minister Lancaster’s mistress. The mistress is the titular English girl, who turns out to be a KGB agent who engages in an affair with the prime minister to create kompromat that the Russian government can use against him. At the end of A Death in Cornwall, Lancaster resumes his position as prime minister.