So I used the picture at the top of this post to introduce the new focus of this blog. All of the items were purchased on our last trip to Goodwill for the hefty total price of $6.00! I love the prices and I love to support Goodwill. They worked tirelessly with my son Nick to help him get a job!

Anyway, while the prices were great on both the CDs and books, the better aspect of the purchase is that the books and the CDs are all from favorites.

The Books

The two books I bought were Blue Labyrinth from the writing duo of Preston & Child and The English Spy by Daniel Silva.

Blue Labyrinth is book # 14 of the 19 book in Preston & Child’s Agent Pendergast series.  While The English Spy is the 15th book in Silva’s Gabriel  Allon series.

The lead characters of both series are outstanding characters. Here is a brief biography of Agent Pendergast from Wikipedia…

Aloysius Xingu Leng Pendergast is a fictional character appearing in novels by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. He first appeared as a supporting character in their first novel, Relic, and in its 1997 sequel Reliquary, before assuming the protagonist role in the 2002 novel The Cabinet of Curiosities

Pendergast is a special agent with the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He once worked out of the New Orleans Field Office of the FBI, but resides in New York City and works out of the New York Field Office; he frequently travels out of state to investigate cases which interest him, often those appearing to be the work of serial killers.

While Agent Pendergast is a fairly typical character in many ways i.e. he works for FBI the books always have a woo-woo vibe throughout.

Dan Silva’s lead character is Gabriel Allon who is a Gabriel Allon, an art conservator and assassin. Here’s a little about Gabriel from Wikipedia….

Gabriel Allon is the main protagonist in Daniel Silva’s thriller and espionage series that focuses on Israeli intelligence. The main characters refer to their employer as ‘the Office’, although it is not specified that it is Mossad(known internally in the Israeli intelligence community as HaMisrad [עברית: המשרד], literally ‘the Office’). Allon’s career began in 1972 when he, Eli Lavon and several others were plucked from civilian life by Ari Shamron to participate in Operation Wrath of God, an act of vengeance to hunt down and eliminate those responsible for killing the Israel athletes in Munich. Wrath of God is referenced in the books throughout the course of his life. Read More

As I said before both are terrific characters and I really like the books. However, I haven’t read books from either series in a long while!

It’s Been How Long Since  I Read Books from These Series

Good God! I just looked at my Goodreads bookshelf and the last Gabriel Allon book I read was in 2006!! It’s not like I don’t have any of the books in my TBR shelves! In fact I have seven of the books in my shelf I think it’s about time I read one of them.

It seems the last time I read an Agent Pendergast book was also was 2015.  I also read Gideon’s Sword the first book in their Gideon’s Crew series in 2015. As well as, The Forgotten Room, Book 4 in the Jeremy Logan series from Lincoln Child.

The bottom line is that it’s beyond time to read new books from these authors. Here’s my TBR pile of books by Preston and Child ….

LOL! and from Daniel Silva….

In order to save you from counting I’ll tell you the total is 15 books! That’s a little less the a third of all the books I’ve read in 2020. Can you say too many books to little time!

One of the reasons that I haven’t read any of these books is that I keep putting off reading the book that is the next in the series that I haven’t read! I think what I’ll do is read either the book it’s the highest rating on Goodreads or the one I have that is the closest to the current release!!

Anybody with a thought or recommendation??

Now this post is longer than I anticipated so I will write about the three CDs I bought at Goodwill in my next post.

Links for the Further Exploration of the Books from Preston & Child and Daniel Silva.

Preston & Child Website
Daniel Silva Website

Books I’ve Reviewed

Brimstone
Dance of Death

As I said earlier I will write about the CDs I bought     at Goodwill in one of my next posts. However right now let’s go “into the night” with my favorite  track from Manassas’ first album “Johnny’s Garden”

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So like I said I didn’t put down the Prince of Fire by Daniel Silva yesterday until I finished what is Book 26 of 2010. Obviously like all of Silva’s books this one was a real page turner for me! But I think that in this book more than any of his books Silva based the storyline on the history of the Arab-Isreali conflict and why both sides fight as hard as they do! The enemy that Gabriel Allon faces is Khaled al -Khalifa who is the grandson of  Asad al-Khalifa.  Asad al-Khalifa  fought the Israeli’s and Gabriel’s mentor and boss. Ari Shamron in 1948 . While Gabriel assassinated Khaled’s father Sabri al-Khalifa for the later’s involvement in the attack on the 1972 Israeli Olympic Team. Both the Sheikh and Sabri were fighting for their Palestinian homeland and their home a village called Beit Sayeed (a fictional village created by Silva) that was wiped out under the Tochnit Dalet which was the real name for the plan to remove the hostile Arab population from centers from lands allocated for the new state of Israel. The characters of Asad and Khaled were based on a photograph of a young boy on the lap of Yasir Arafat at the funeral of his father in 1979. The father was terrorist Ali Hassan Salameh the mastermind of the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre.

Anyway this book was great and really showed the humanity on both sides of the struggle and maybe for the first time Gabriel questioned the actions of his country. The book is highly recommended and while the book is part of a series that is best read from the beginning I think you could read the book by itself and still enjoy it!

Finally, I went to Borders Saturday night and used the gift card my son Peter gave me for Father’s Day to buy Karin Slaughter’s new book Broken. It’s great to be back in Grant County and the world of Sara Litton, Lena Adams, Will Trent and all the other great characters of this wonderful series! I’m already about a 1/3 of the way through the book and can’t wait to get back to it!

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The only two good things about this past week were that the weather broke on Tuesday night and the oppressive heat from Monday and Tuesday was gone and I had a chance to read a little during our first break in the morning and at lunch. Oh and once when the rig was broken down for about an hour yesterday.

What I had taken with me to read was Prince of Fire by Daniel Silva. Prince of Fire is the fifth book in the Gabriel Allon series. This is one of those series that I usually am behind on and while I’m reading a book in it I realize how much I like the series and then forget about it and move on to something else, duh! But I really do love the series and the characters including Gabriel Allon, who is an art restorer and Israeli agent.

The stories are very fast moving and usually have a little history  thrown in as is the case in Prince of Fire. Gabriel’s hatred of his Arab enemies has been fueled by the loss of his son and virtually his wife, who is in a catatonic state, from a car bomb in Vienna. Anyway in Prince of Fire Gabriel is chasing the son of a past enemy who Gabriel assassinated, who has directed several terrorist attacks including the bombng of the Israeli embassy in Rome.  But the question is really who is chasing who! I’m about 2/3 of the way through and probably won’t be able to put it down today until I finish!

Oh and it looks like I will be another book behind as his new book comes out July 20th in hardcover The Rembrandt Affair!

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The only two good things about this past week were that the weather broke on Tuesday night and the oppressive heat from Monday and Tuesday was gone and I had a chance to read a little during our first break in the morning and at lunch. Oh and once when the rig was broken down for about an hour yesterday. What I had taken with me to read was Daniel Silva‘s Prince of Fire. Prince of Fire is the fifth book in the Gabriel Allon series. This is one of those series that I usually am behind on and while I’m reading a book in it I realize how much I like the series and then forget about it and move on to something else, duh! But I really do love the series and the characters including Gabriel Allon, who is an art restorer and Israeli agent. The stories are very fast moving and usually have a little history  thrown in as is the case in Prince of Fire. Gabriel’s hatred of his Arab enemies has been fueled by the loss of his son and virtually his wife, who is in a catatonic state, from a car bomb in Vienna. Anyway in Prince of Fire Gabriel is chasing the son of a past enemy who Gabriel assassinated, who has directed several terrorist attacks including the bombng of the Israeli embassy in Rome.  But the question is really who is chasing who! I’m about 2/3 of the way through and probably won’t be able to put it down today until I finish!

Oh and it looks like I will be another book behind as his new book comes out July 20th in hardcover The Rembrandt Affair!

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