I'm on a rare fiction reading kick, having recently completed Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth and its sequel, World Without End. The Pillars of the Earth was particularly interesting because Follett's representation of the sincere faith of Prior Philip. What made that character even more interesting was Follett's own self-professed atheism.
Though Follett's two books are historical novels (and that also makes them unique in his corpus), reading these books prompted me to dive back into another genre of fiction that I thoroughly enjoyed when I was in my 20's: the spy thriller. And so, after finding an NPR piece on the best spy novels, I thought I would give Silva's sophomore effort a try.
I enjoyed Silva's second novel which was published in 1998 and, like his first book - The Unlikely Spy - was a New York Times Bestseller. Like Follett's Pillars and World Without End, it has too much gratuitous sex in my opinion, but it had an engaging plot and did an ok job at characterization. In terms of story, I did not find The Mark of the Assassin as interesting as almost any Robert Ludlum novel or Tom Clancy in his better Jack Ryan books. But it definitely kept my interest and I was intrigued that end turned out to be somewhat unpredictable and not all the loose ends were taken care of.
What I missed in Assassin was the moral/spiritual gravitas that was more evident in Pillars.
A number of years ago, I read an article in a journal dedicated to script writing that what made stories interesting was the degree to which they interacted with a strong moral center. That was what I missed in Silva's book.
And so tonight I continue my search for the perfect spy novel with Robert Littell's The Once and Future Spy, which was also mentioned in the NPR piece referenced above.
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