July 17, 2025 • 25 mins
Newt talks with Daniel Silva, #1 New York Times bestselling novelist known for his Gabriel Allon series. Silva discusses his latest novel, "An Inside Job," the 25th installment in the series, which features the intriguing character Gabriel Allon, an art restorer and legendary spy. Silva shares the inspiration behind Allon's character, including influences from real-life art restorers and historical events like Munich massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes in September 1972. Their conversation explores the novel's plot, which involves a mysterious death in Venice and a scandal at the Vatican, drawing parallels to real-world events. Silva also discusses his writing process, which includes crafting his novels in longhand on yellow legal pads, and his unique approach to storytelling without a predefined outline. Silva describes his knowledge of art, history, and the intricacies of Vatican politics, which makes this latest novel very engaging.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
On this episode of news World. I have been reading
Daniel Silva's books for many years. I'm a huge fan
of his writing. I was delighted to read his latest novel,
the twenty fifth and the Gabriel Alon series, called An
Inside Job. I think of as a personal friend. He's
a remarkable human being, a great newsman, a great novelist,
(00:26):
someone who should actually write a book about restaurants to
go to in Rome and other major cities. And he's
married to a wonderful woman who's a great reporter in
her own right. I'm thrilled he will take time to
talk to me and join me about his latest novel
and frankly talk some about my favorite art restorer and
legendary spy, Gabriel Alon. So I am really pleased to
(00:48):
welcome my guest, number one New York Times bestselling novelist,
Daniel Silva. Daniel, welcome, and thank you for joining me
again a new chorldy.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
It is such a pleasure to be back with you,
so good to hear your voice.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
I have to confess, when An Inside Job came out,
your twenty fifth novel featuring Gabriel Alon, I read it
within twenty four hours and then thought, oh my god,
I have to wait another year, so we have to
talk at some point about speeding up this process. Gabriel
Alana such a vivid and remarkable character. How did you
(01:34):
come up with him?
Speaker 2 (01:36):
He was a combination of a typical character construction process
with a little bit of serendipity and good fortune. When
I created him, I knew his professional and personal backstory,
at least a part of it as I was building him.
In constructing him, my wife Jamie and I were strolled
(02:00):
through Georgetown one day and she reminds me, don't forget
we have dinner with David Boll tonight. Who is David Bull.
David Bull is truly was? He passed away this winter.
Sadly was one of the world's finest art restores, and
he lived around the corner from us in Georgetown, worked
at the National Gallery. And I stopped on my tracks
and I said, that's it. Dabriel Lawn's cover job is
(02:23):
that he's an art restore. And had dinner with David
that evening. I pulled him aside at dinner and I said, listen,
you know, I have this crazy idea I'd like to
turn an Israeli assassin into an Italian art restore. Can
you help me do that? And he said, absolutely, we
can do that, And so we went into the restoration
lab at the National Gallery of Art a few days later,
(02:44):
and I started studying the craft of restoration with David
and the other restorers there. And the more I learned
about restoration, the more it seemed to me to have many,
many things in common hate to use this word, but
with the craft of assassination and targeted killings. And when
I wrote that first book, I structured it as though
(03:04):
the operation that Gabriel was involved in it was a
restoration rather than an assassination. And look, it has wonderful
metaphoric possibilities that I am able to use in the stories.
It gives him a beautiful sense of vision. You know,
I often say he has the best pair of eyes
in the business. I love writing a scene through Gabriel's
(03:27):
eyes because of the way he sees things. That just
makes him a remarkable character. And one of the things
that we've learned about Gabriel Lawn is that, like most
very very skilled restorers, he can forge paintings. And he
forges a painting.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
In this novel, you got an Israeli assassin art restorer.
To what degree was the initial novel and the initial
sense of how he would operate shaped by the Israeli
campaign after the Munich massacre of Israeli mmpige athletes.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
That was in his backstory, you know, And so that
was when he came on the page. It was roughly
nineteen ninety nine, and he had been out I call
it the office, but that's the way they refer to it.
But let's say he left the Masade in around nineteen ninety,
so he'd been out of the Mosad for ten years
(04:22):
at that point, and he'd suffered a terrible tragedy. A
PLO terrorist mastermind had planted a bomb beneath his car
and killed his son and maimed his wife. And he'd
been out of the Masad for ten years at that point.
But look, he was part of what, for lack of
a better word, the hit team, the team of operatives
that was assembled in the autumn of nineteen seventy two
(04:43):
did go out and hunt down and eliminate the perpetrators
of the Meanocalympics massacre. He was chosen for that team
because he had the right personality, the right set of skills,
and he spoke perfect German. His parents were German. German
was the first language that he ever heard and lured
it is his first language. He could pass as a European.
(05:04):
I mean, so he was perfect for what they had
in mind, because most of the operation did take place
in Europe.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
As anomalist, you are, in a sense, creating your own universe.
At what point did it occur to you that his
mother would be an artist?
Speaker 2 (05:20):
You know, I can't recall when I made that decision.
Gabriel's relationship with his mother is incredibly complicated by the
fact that she was a survivor of Berkenau and was obviously,
like everyone who came through that experience, was scarred by it.
And I don't think it's wrong to say that she
(05:42):
was sort of a wreck of a person after that,
and we call it second generation Holocaust survivor syndrome. Gabriel
clearly suffers from that. These people who survived the death
camps and saw what they saw, they weren't always the
best parent after that. Through those fault of their own,
(06:02):
they carried the scars of what they had experienced and
what they had seen. It made them very emotionally fragile
and made them, in the case of Gabriel's mother, not
able to really show affection toward her only child because
she was afraid that he was going to be taken
away from her. So he had a very fraught and
difficult relationship with his mother. And he also revered her
(06:27):
because she was an incredibly talented artist, and that's where
he learned. He learned lying at her feet, and her
father was an artist. As I say in this novel
that Gabriel Lahan was born with a paintbrush in his hand,
and so it's a fascinating part of his character. But
I'm telling you that it's very real for that generation
(06:48):
of Israelis. These housing estates in early Israel were filled
with people from the displacement camps. These were not happy places.
As I've written before, that candles burned all the time.
In Gabriel's home for all of the relatives that he lost.
His mother was a wreck. At night, he could hear
the screaming of people battling their demons in this settlement
(07:12):
where he lived. It not easy, not an easy childhood.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
You've now had twenty five novels, and an inside Job
is the twenty fifth and it is superb. It's exactly
qualitatively what I would expect from you, which means it
brilliantly written.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
To me.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
You're an amazing writer, and it captures you into an
interesting story from a unique angle. But in a way,
you've created a world in a biography. Right. Has this
just evolved over time or was it Nason in the
back of your head from the very beginning.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
I just took it one book at a time, and
it accumulates, and you pick up a character here that
you fall in love with, and you pick up a
character there, and if you get to the third book,
and I write a book called The Confessor, And he
stumbles into this very close relationship with the Vatican. He
(08:06):
ends up restoring paintings for the Vatican. He serves as
sort of an unofficial security consultant for the Vatican, and
he works with the Vatican in helping to repair the
strained relationship between Christianity and Judaism. In that regard, he
and I are sort of on the same mission.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
You've moved from place to place. I mean, now, a
great part of Gabriel's life is in Venice. What led
you to pick Venice?
Speaker 2 (08:35):
It's sort of where I found Gabriel. I mean earlier
books like The Confessor was set largely in Venice, or
a big portion of it was in Venice. A number
of books have a strong Venice component. So what is
Gabriel's connection to Venice. That's where he served his apprenticeship,
and that's where he learned to be a restorer, and
so he's always had a very close tie to the city.
(08:56):
And of course he married a Venetian. His second wife
is a Venetian Jew. So Venice is very important to
the series. And when he retired from his position as
Director General of the Israeli Intelligence Service, he packed up
his family and moved to Venice, and he and his
wife now run the largest restoration firm in the city.
(09:17):
And you know, poor me, I have to spend all
this time in Venice. It's really rough there.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
You also clearly have extraordinary knowledge of Rome. Are you
more of Venetian than a Roman?
Speaker 2 (09:47):
No, I'm more of a Roman. I'm more of a Roman.
I mean, I love Venice, but it get very claustrophobic,
and it's tourism is a problem. There are beautiful corners
of Venice where you can sort of imagine that to
be city. I would have loved to have been there
during the pandemic. Did you see those incredible pictures where
the water in the canals was running crystal clear because
(10:09):
there wasn't so much traffic and so many tourists in
the city. I love Rome. I'm crazy about Rome.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
You have a woman who dies mysteriously and she's floating
in the waters of the Venetian Lagoon, which I think
is perfectly plausible, But then you leave Venice. It's very
clear that a significant part of this was inspired by
a real scandal at the Vatican involving Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Bitcho,
(10:40):
who lost his roll, I mean, was clearly yielding sentenced
to five and a half years in prison. It's really
fascinating to me. You capture the flavor of the world's
last absolute monarchy in a way that I thought was very,
very intrigue.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
I won't tell you the name of the very well
known Vatican correspondent, but he said to me one time,
you're the only person who understands the way this place
really works. And I don't know how I came to that,
except that I'm a good mimic. I did grow up
(11:17):
in the faith and have priests within the family and
nuns within the family, always around religious and still am.
I have a number of very close friends who are
serving the priesthood. I think I understand what most priests
really like. I try to make them seem like normal people.
We have some friends of mine worked at the Vatican,
(11:38):
and we would just go out and go to these
little restaurants and they would sit with my kids and
we would just have the most incredible time just laughing, laughing,
laughing and just being like normal people. And that's what
I tried to do with mine, to not get too
up in the holiness this and holiness that, and eminence, eminence, seminence,
(11:59):
but try to treat them as though they are officials
of a city state, which they are normal people. That
is my technique for dealing with them. I have a
fictitious pope. My Pope sneaks out of the Vatican in
plain clothes just to try to get out of the
place a little bit and have a meal out. I
did that very intentionally so that I could get that
(12:23):
cassick off him and just try to imagine him as
a real person. I didn't give my pope a papal
au pontifical name. I would refer to him by his
given name, because I didn't want him to be sort
of lost behind that name.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Wait, DISENTI with the Pope you write, given what happened
during the process of your writing and publishing the book,
with the passage of for Insis and the election of
the first American pope in history, in many ways, I
felt like your pope had prefigured how Pope Leo actually operates.
He comes across a sort of remarkable, modern practice, down
(13:00):
to earth person who could in fact have the kind
of conversations that you have in the book.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Yeah, I think he is. I clearly modeled him, borrowed
a great deal from Francis. But it's remarkable to me
the degree to which he does remind me almost more
of Leo. At this point I had him live in
the Casa Santa Marta. It's remarkable the degree to which
he really does strike me as a Leo like figure.
(13:29):
It's in the text and elsewhere in the series. This
Pope is the liberation theologian. I think that Leo probably
is as well. I think Francis was as well. He
is focused, like a laser beam on the needs of
the poor. He wants the church to be focused on
the poor and to be poor itself, just like Francis did.
(13:50):
And he is bound and determined to root out once
and for all the corruption that has bedeviled this institution
since the nineteen seventies. It has been sort of one
financial scandal after another, unfortunately, and very deeply embedded, and
very deeply embedded. It's not anti Catholic to say that
it's not any anti anything. It is what it is.
(14:12):
And I think that the problem is secrecy, secrecy, secrecy,
and that they want to play by two sets of rules,
and of course that priests and bishops aren't necessarily the
best money managers in the world, and they have to
rely on the so called men of trust to help
run their financial affairs. And a lot of these men
of so called trusts that they have chosen over the
(14:34):
years have not been trustful at all, and they've gotten
them into a lot of trouble.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Cardinal pell who had been brought in specifically to try
to clean it up by Pope Princess and listening to him,
describe the level of resistance, and you capture this in
three or four of your novels. You have several different
opportunities where the interweaving between the criminal aloneans of Italy
and the elements of the Vatican are sobering and historically clearer.
(15:03):
But it's one of the things you do, I think
extraordinary well. You communicate that what you deal with in
certain kinds of criminal structures his entire networks of people.
It's not one person or two people. It's much more
demps than the TV version.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah, there are networks, are power centers, and everyone always
thought it revolved strictly around doctrine. That that's where the
resistance to Francis was. You know that he had kind
things to say famously, you know who am I to
judge about the LGVTQ community and wanted to change the
(15:39):
rules regarding the sacraments and divorced Catholics. But I think
that the real war was about the money and reform.
It was a holy war upon intended inside the Vatican.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
The inside job was so rich. Why did you pick
Leonardo rather than say Michelangelo or Raphael? Is the painting?
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Well, two words, Salvator mundy. You know that a painting.
Let's just say that the attribution is correct. It's air tight,
it's Leonardo with a helping hand of his studio. Okay,
let's say that's exactly what it is. This should be
one hundred million dollars, one hundred and twenty million dollars,
(16:35):
maybe maybe one hundred and fifty million dollars. I happened
to know someone who handled the painting and attempted to
buy the painting. Effect I was allowed to see it
years before it sort of broke through into the public consciousness.
It startled me the first time I saw it. It it
really did. I thought it was quite extraordinary. And at
(16:56):
that time, the dealers who controlled it, they wanted one
hundred and twenty five million dollars for it. That's what
they thought the painting was worth. And then it gets
in the hands of Christie's and they run this incredibly
skilled marketing campaign. They auction the painting not in an
old master sale but in contemporary evening sale, and it
(17:16):
gets caught in a bidding war between two of the
richest men in the world, men to whom money means
absolutely nothing, and we end up at down near a
half billion dollars. There's no other artist that's going to
get me there, and that's what I wanted there's an
art auction. I'm making little air quotes, little scare quotes
in the air. Here there's an art auction in this book,
(17:38):
a private black Ops art auction. What I was really
trying to do with that set piece is to sort
of capture the folly of the sale of that painting
to MBS for that kind of money. I mean, God
bless him. I hope he builds a beautiful home for
it and lets Christian pilgrims and anyone else who wants
to enter the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to come see it.
(18:00):
But I'm glad he paid that amount of money for it.
I don't think the painting is worth that. But here's
the flip side of that. What is anything worth. It's
worth what someone is willing to pay for it. So
you know who am I have judged?
Speaker 1 (18:11):
You weave so many different things into Gabriel Alone's life,
and you have him now to set up this trap.
He has to paint an exact replica of the painting.
To what extent did you actually study Leonardo's painting style
in order to write that section.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
I studied it. I learned everything I could about it,
and as you can tell, I mean, I know exactly
how he mixed his base layer, his ground I know
that he put finely ground glass on the base layer
of his painting to give it that shimmer and sparkle.
I know how he made his painting's layer by layer
(18:57):
by layer by layer. And we get to expel eperience
that through Gabriel, and he sort of morphs into Leonardo.
He adopts Leonardo's personality as he's working on it in
this novel. Without giving too much away, he forges a
Leonardo and then he gets to restore Leonardo, and they're
my favorite sections of the book. To be honest with you,
(19:17):
I loved painting the Leonardo mean, he painted it for me.
But that description of how he made his paintings is
very accurate.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
I think part of what makes this such a successful
long term series is that whether it's the Pope, the painting,
the restaurant, the travel, the conspiracy, the counter conspiracy, the
setting up of the trap made, all the different things
going on, it never ends. The book carries you from
(19:48):
scene to scene like a superb movie.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Thank you, thank you. You have to come on tour
with me, and we have to do this in front
of live audiences, and then I can have the night
off and just you can ask the questions and I'll
nod appreciatively and save my voice. But thank you. I
really appreciate that. You know. I do have a odd
unique style that I've developed. I think that I do
try to make the books read lyrically, a bit like
(20:15):
plain song poetry here and there, blank verse.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
I read your books in part just for the pleasure
of the language. You were one of the best wordsmeths
of our generation. It says it made amazing to watch
how you do it.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Thank you, speaker Kingrish. That's fair character.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
What makes it really frustrating for those of us who
are mere mortals is that you write all your books
in pencil on yellow legal pads. And do you still
do it on the floor?
Speaker 2 (20:42):
I do, I do. I'm pretty flexible if I just
like to lie on the floor. I was awarded the
inaugural Nelson to Mill Award on Sunday evening out on
Long Island, where Nelson lived. And that's one of a
couple of things that mister Demill and I had in common,
was that we both wrote in Long Henry. He wrote
in longhand he used a number one pencil. I'm a
(21:03):
number two pencil person. There are a few of us
out there. And Tyler, who I just adore, author of
Accidental Tourist, among other great novels. She has this technique
where after she edits the book, she writes the entire
darn thing out in longhand to do one final edits.
And why does she do that? It slows it down,
(21:24):
and it exposes by extraneous words, false notes. And that's
the beauty of writing in longhand that it does slow
the process down a great deal.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
And as I understand it, you actually don't start a
novel like an inside job with an outline and a
sense of world. End up, you started, and then it
sort of carries you where it goes.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
I like to see about maybe a quarter of it.
That's all I need. I guess I'd like to say
that I'd write the book's sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph.
I like to think of my first draft as my outline,
and then Jamie and I will sit and read it aloud,
and then it gets edited down. I don't know about you,
(22:09):
but I believe in editing down. I find it hard
to edit up. I can add it scene or add
a chapter here. But I like to overwrite the first
draft and then edit down, down, down, down down.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Part of the different in your brilliance and my production approaches.
I hate editing.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
I always have editors, and they are always good, they
always make it better, and I just hate it. I
could never compete. I never reach your level of talent.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Oh, come on, come on. You write nonfiction, you write fiction,
you write political commentary. You're a very skilled, highly skilled
writer and stylist, and you're also an orator, and so
you know how to write a speech. You're selling yourself short.
You're being overly modest.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Well, no one has ever accused me of that, but
I will take that as a great n I appreciate
so much you and Jamie. This book is great. Do
you have a new one coming? Have you thought of
the next one?
Speaker 2 (23:03):
The only way that I can get a book out
of my head or stop tinkering with it, I had
to teach myself how to write a book in such
a short period of time. I think it's our friend
Leonardo da Vinci who said that a work of art
is never finished, it's only abandoned. I don't abandon my words.
They are taken away from me before I think this
(23:25):
everything is exactly right, and I will sit and drive
myself crazy, and the only way I can stop that
is to get going on something else. I finish the book.
I do a little bit of pre publicity work, the
kinds of things I have to do to get ready
to publish the book. But in June, I'd just like
to sit and find my way into a new book,
and so I was able to do that this June,
(23:45):
and I have forty or fifty pages of the next book.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Well, I can assure you I am looking forward eagerly.
I will try to survive the long desert between your books,
but I'm confident will be equally brilliant.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Thank you. It's more than I deserve. Gingrich, thank you
so much. Thank you. You're very kind.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
I want to thank you and beIN give Jamie my regards.
I'm such a big fan of both of you. Your
new book, and Inside Job is available now on Amazon
and bookstores everywhere, and I recommend everyone after you read it,
go back to number one and learn all about Gabriel
throughout his entire life. I really enjoyed it, and I'm
looking forward to your next book.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Oh Thank you so very much for having me. It
was wonderful to be back and good to hear your voice.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Thank you to my guest Daniel Silva. You can get
a link to buy his new book, An Inside Job
on our show page at newtsworld dot com. Newsworld is
produced by Gangrish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer
is Guernsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork
for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks
(24:51):
to the team at Gingrish three sixty. If you've been
enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and
both rate us with five stars and give us a
review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now,
listeners of news World can sign up for my three
freeweekly columns at gingrishwree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm
newt Gangrich. This is neut World.
On this episode of news World. I have been reading
Daniel Silva's books for many years. I'm a huge fan
of his writing. I was delighted to read his latest novel,
the twenty fifth and the Gabriel Alon series, called An
Inside Job. I think of as a personal friend. He's
a remarkable human being, a great newsman, a great novelist,
(00:26):
someone who should actually write a book about restaurants to
go to in Rome and other major cities. And he's
married to a wonderful woman who's a great reporter in
her own right. I'm thrilled he will take time to
talk to me and join me about his latest novel
and frankly talk some about my favorite art restorer and
legendary spy, Gabriel Alon. So I am really pleased to
(00:48):
welcome my guest, number one New York Times bestselling novelist,
Daniel Silva. Daniel, welcome, and thank you for joining me
again a new chorldy.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
It is such a pleasure to be back with you,
so good to hear your voice.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
I have to confess, when An Inside Job came out,
your twenty fifth novel featuring Gabriel Alon, I read it
within twenty four hours and then thought, oh my god,
I have to wait another year, so we have to
talk at some point about speeding up this process. Gabriel
Alana such a vivid and remarkable character. How did you
(01:34):
come up with him?
Speaker 2 (01:36):
He was a combination of a typical character construction process
with a little bit of serendipity and good fortune. When
I created him, I knew his professional and personal backstory,
at least a part of it as I was building him.
In constructing him, my wife Jamie and I were strolled
(02:00):
through Georgetown one day and she reminds me, don't forget
we have dinner with David Boll tonight. Who is David Bull.
David Bull is truly was? He passed away this winter.
Sadly was one of the world's finest art restores, and
he lived around the corner from us in Georgetown, worked
at the National Gallery. And I stopped on my tracks
and I said, that's it. Dabriel Lawn's cover job is
(02:23):
that he's an art restore. And had dinner with David
that evening. I pulled him aside at dinner and I said, listen,
you know, I have this crazy idea I'd like to
turn an Israeli assassin into an Italian art restore. Can
you help me do that? And he said, absolutely, we
can do that, And so we went into the restoration
lab at the National Gallery of Art a few days later,
(02:44):
and I started studying the craft of restoration with David
and the other restorers there. And the more I learned
about restoration, the more it seemed to me to have many,
many things in common hate to use this word, but
with the craft of assassination and targeted killings. And when
I wrote that first book, I structured it as though
(03:04):
the operation that Gabriel was involved in it was a
restoration rather than an assassination. And look, it has wonderful
metaphoric possibilities that I am able to use in the stories.
It gives him a beautiful sense of vision. You know,
I often say he has the best pair of eyes
in the business. I love writing a scene through Gabriel's
(03:27):
eyes because of the way he sees things. That just
makes him a remarkable character. And one of the things
that we've learned about Gabriel Lawn is that, like most
very very skilled restorers, he can forge paintings. And he
forges a painting.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
In this novel, you got an Israeli assassin art restorer.
To what degree was the initial novel and the initial
sense of how he would operate shaped by the Israeli
campaign after the Munich massacre of Israeli mmpige athletes.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
That was in his backstory, you know, And so that
was when he came on the page. It was roughly
nineteen ninety nine, and he had been out I call
it the office, but that's the way they refer to it.
But let's say he left the Masade in around nineteen ninety,
so he'd been out of the Mosad for ten years
(04:22):
at that point, and he'd suffered a terrible tragedy. A
PLO terrorist mastermind had planted a bomb beneath his car
and killed his son and maimed his wife. And he'd
been out of the Masad for ten years at that point.
But look, he was part of what, for lack of
a better word, the hit team, the team of operatives
that was assembled in the autumn of nineteen seventy two
(04:43):
did go out and hunt down and eliminate the perpetrators
of the Meanocalympics massacre. He was chosen for that team
because he had the right personality, the right set of skills,
and he spoke perfect German. His parents were German. German
was the first language that he ever heard and lured
it is his first language. He could pass as a European.
(05:04):
I mean, so he was perfect for what they had
in mind, because most of the operation did take place
in Europe.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
As anomalist, you are, in a sense, creating your own universe.
At what point did it occur to you that his
mother would be an artist?
Speaker 2 (05:20):
You know, I can't recall when I made that decision.
Gabriel's relationship with his mother is incredibly complicated by the
fact that she was a survivor of Berkenau and was obviously,
like everyone who came through that experience, was scarred by it.
And I don't think it's wrong to say that she
(05:42):
was sort of a wreck of a person after that,
and we call it second generation Holocaust survivor syndrome. Gabriel
clearly suffers from that. These people who survived the death
camps and saw what they saw, they weren't always the
best parent after that. Through those fault of their own,
(06:02):
they carried the scars of what they had experienced and
what they had seen. It made them very emotionally fragile
and made them, in the case of Gabriel's mother, not
able to really show affection toward her only child because
she was afraid that he was going to be taken
away from her. So he had a very fraught and
difficult relationship with his mother. And he also revered her
(06:27):
because she was an incredibly talented artist, and that's where
he learned. He learned lying at her feet, and her
father was an artist. As I say in this novel
that Gabriel Lahan was born with a paintbrush in his hand,
and so it's a fascinating part of his character. But
I'm telling you that it's very real for that generation
(06:48):
of Israelis. These housing estates in early Israel were filled
with people from the displacement camps. These were not happy places.
As I've written before, that candles burned all the time.
In Gabriel's home for all of the relatives that he lost.
His mother was a wreck. At night, he could hear
the screaming of people battling their demons in this settlement
(07:12):
where he lived. It not easy, not an easy childhood.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
You've now had twenty five novels, and an inside Job
is the twenty fifth and it is superb. It's exactly
qualitatively what I would expect from you, which means it
brilliantly written.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
To me.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
You're an amazing writer, and it captures you into an
interesting story from a unique angle. But in a way,
you've created a world in a biography. Right. Has this
just evolved over time or was it Nason in the
back of your head from the very beginning.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
I just took it one book at a time, and
it accumulates, and you pick up a character here that
you fall in love with, and you pick up a
character there, and if you get to the third book,
and I write a book called The Confessor, And he
stumbles into this very close relationship with the Vatican. He
(08:06):
ends up restoring paintings for the Vatican. He serves as
sort of an unofficial security consultant for the Vatican, and
he works with the Vatican in helping to repair the
strained relationship between Christianity and Judaism. In that regard, he
and I are sort of on the same mission.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
You've moved from place to place. I mean, now, a
great part of Gabriel's life is in Venice. What led
you to pick Venice?
Speaker 2 (08:35):
It's sort of where I found Gabriel. I mean earlier
books like The Confessor was set largely in Venice, or
a big portion of it was in Venice. A number
of books have a strong Venice component. So what is
Gabriel's connection to Venice. That's where he served his apprenticeship,
and that's where he learned to be a restorer, and
so he's always had a very close tie to the city.
(08:56):
And of course he married a Venetian. His second wife
is a Venetian Jew. So Venice is very important to
the series. And when he retired from his position as
Director General of the Israeli Intelligence Service, he packed up
his family and moved to Venice, and he and his
wife now run the largest restoration firm in the city.
(09:17):
And you know, poor me, I have to spend all
this time in Venice. It's really rough there.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
You also clearly have extraordinary knowledge of Rome. Are you
more of Venetian than a Roman?
Speaker 2 (09:47):
No, I'm more of a Roman. I'm more of a Roman.
I mean, I love Venice, but it get very claustrophobic,
and it's tourism is a problem. There are beautiful corners
of Venice where you can sort of imagine that to
be city. I would have loved to have been there
during the pandemic. Did you see those incredible pictures where
the water in the canals was running crystal clear because
(10:09):
there wasn't so much traffic and so many tourists in
the city. I love Rome. I'm crazy about Rome.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
You have a woman who dies mysteriously and she's floating
in the waters of the Venetian Lagoon, which I think
is perfectly plausible, But then you leave Venice. It's very
clear that a significant part of this was inspired by
a real scandal at the Vatican involving Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Bitcho,
(10:40):
who lost his roll, I mean, was clearly yielding sentenced
to five and a half years in prison. It's really
fascinating to me. You capture the flavor of the world's
last absolute monarchy in a way that I thought was very,
very intrigue.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
I won't tell you the name of the very well
known Vatican correspondent, but he said to me one time,
you're the only person who understands the way this place
really works. And I don't know how I came to that,
except that I'm a good mimic. I did grow up
(11:17):
in the faith and have priests within the family and
nuns within the family, always around religious and still am.
I have a number of very close friends who are
serving the priesthood. I think I understand what most priests
really like. I try to make them seem like normal people.
We have some friends of mine worked at the Vatican,
(11:38):
and we would just go out and go to these
little restaurants and they would sit with my kids and
we would just have the most incredible time just laughing, laughing,
laughing and just being like normal people. And that's what
I tried to do with mine, to not get too
up in the holiness this and holiness that, and eminence, eminence, seminence,
(11:59):
but try to treat them as though they are officials
of a city state, which they are normal people. That
is my technique for dealing with them. I have a
fictitious pope. My Pope sneaks out of the Vatican in
plain clothes just to try to get out of the
place a little bit and have a meal out. I
did that very intentionally so that I could get that
(12:23):
cassick off him and just try to imagine him as
a real person. I didn't give my pope a papal
au pontifical name. I would refer to him by his
given name, because I didn't want him to be sort
of lost behind that name.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Wait, DISENTI with the Pope you write, given what happened
during the process of your writing and publishing the book,
with the passage of for Insis and the election of
the first American pope in history, in many ways, I
felt like your pope had prefigured how Pope Leo actually operates.
He comes across a sort of remarkable, modern practice, down
(13:00):
to earth person who could in fact have the kind
of conversations that you have in the book.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Yeah, I think he is. I clearly modeled him, borrowed
a great deal from Francis. But it's remarkable to me
the degree to which he does remind me almost more
of Leo. At this point I had him live in
the Casa Santa Marta. It's remarkable the degree to which
he really does strike me as a Leo like figure.
(13:29):
It's in the text and elsewhere in the series. This
Pope is the liberation theologian. I think that Leo probably
is as well. I think Francis was as well. He
is focused, like a laser beam on the needs of
the poor. He wants the church to be focused on
the poor and to be poor itself, just like Francis did.
(13:50):
And he is bound and determined to root out once
and for all the corruption that has bedeviled this institution
since the nineteen seventies. It has been sort of one
financial scandal after another, unfortunately, and very deeply embedded, and
very deeply embedded. It's not anti Catholic to say that
it's not any anti anything. It is what it is.
(14:12):
And I think that the problem is secrecy, secrecy, secrecy,
and that they want to play by two sets of rules,
and of course that priests and bishops aren't necessarily the
best money managers in the world, and they have to
rely on the so called men of trust to help
run their financial affairs. And a lot of these men
of so called trusts that they have chosen over the
(14:34):
years have not been trustful at all, and they've gotten
them into a lot of trouble.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Cardinal pell who had been brought in specifically to try
to clean it up by Pope Princess and listening to him,
describe the level of resistance, and you capture this in
three or four of your novels. You have several different
opportunities where the interweaving between the criminal aloneans of Italy
and the elements of the Vatican are sobering and historically clearer.
(15:03):
But it's one of the things you do, I think
extraordinary well. You communicate that what you deal with in
certain kinds of criminal structures his entire networks of people.
It's not one person or two people. It's much more
demps than the TV version.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah, there are networks, are power centers, and everyone always
thought it revolved strictly around doctrine. That that's where the
resistance to Francis was. You know that he had kind
things to say famously, you know who am I to
judge about the LGVTQ community and wanted to change the
(15:39):
rules regarding the sacraments and divorced Catholics. But I think
that the real war was about the money and reform.
It was a holy war upon intended inside the Vatican.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
The inside job was so rich. Why did you pick
Leonardo rather than say Michelangelo or Raphael? Is the painting?
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Well, two words, Salvator mundy. You know that a painting.
Let's just say that the attribution is correct. It's air tight,
it's Leonardo with a helping hand of his studio. Okay,
let's say that's exactly what it is. This should be
one hundred million dollars, one hundred and twenty million dollars,
(16:35):
maybe maybe one hundred and fifty million dollars. I happened
to know someone who handled the painting and attempted to
buy the painting. Effect I was allowed to see it
years before it sort of broke through into the public consciousness.
It startled me the first time I saw it. It it
really did. I thought it was quite extraordinary. And at
(16:56):
that time, the dealers who controlled it, they wanted one
hundred and twenty five million dollars for it. That's what
they thought the painting was worth. And then it gets
in the hands of Christie's and they run this incredibly
skilled marketing campaign. They auction the painting not in an
old master sale but in contemporary evening sale, and it
(17:16):
gets caught in a bidding war between two of the
richest men in the world, men to whom money means
absolutely nothing, and we end up at down near a
half billion dollars. There's no other artist that's going to
get me there, and that's what I wanted there's an
art auction. I'm making little air quotes, little scare quotes
in the air. Here there's an art auction in this book,
(17:38):
a private black Ops art auction. What I was really
trying to do with that set piece is to sort
of capture the folly of the sale of that painting
to MBS for that kind of money. I mean, God
bless him. I hope he builds a beautiful home for
it and lets Christian pilgrims and anyone else who wants
to enter the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to come see it.
(18:00):
But I'm glad he paid that amount of money for it.
I don't think the painting is worth that. But here's
the flip side of that. What is anything worth. It's
worth what someone is willing to pay for it. So
you know who am I have judged?
Speaker 1 (18:11):
You weave so many different things into Gabriel Alone's life,
and you have him now to set up this trap.
He has to paint an exact replica of the painting.
To what extent did you actually study Leonardo's painting style
in order to write that section.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
I studied it. I learned everything I could about it,
and as you can tell, I mean, I know exactly
how he mixed his base layer, his ground I know
that he put finely ground glass on the base layer
of his painting to give it that shimmer and sparkle.
I know how he made his painting's layer by layer
(18:57):
by layer by layer. And we get to expel eperience
that through Gabriel, and he sort of morphs into Leonardo.
He adopts Leonardo's personality as he's working on it in
this novel. Without giving too much away, he forges a
Leonardo and then he gets to restore Leonardo, and they're
my favorite sections of the book. To be honest with you,
(19:17):
I loved painting the Leonardo mean, he painted it for me.
But that description of how he made his paintings is
very accurate.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
I think part of what makes this such a successful
long term series is that whether it's the Pope, the painting,
the restaurant, the travel, the conspiracy, the counter conspiracy, the
setting up of the trap made, all the different things
going on, it never ends. The book carries you from
(19:48):
scene to scene like a superb movie.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Thank you, thank you. You have to come on tour
with me, and we have to do this in front
of live audiences, and then I can have the night
off and just you can ask the questions and I'll
nod appreciatively and save my voice. But thank you. I
really appreciate that. You know. I do have a odd
unique style that I've developed. I think that I do
try to make the books read lyrically, a bit like
(20:15):
plain song poetry here and there, blank verse.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
I read your books in part just for the pleasure
of the language. You were one of the best wordsmeths
of our generation. It says it made amazing to watch
how you do it.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Thank you, speaker Kingrish. That's fair character.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
What makes it really frustrating for those of us who
are mere mortals is that you write all your books
in pencil on yellow legal pads. And do you still
do it on the floor?
Speaker 2 (20:42):
I do, I do. I'm pretty flexible if I just
like to lie on the floor. I was awarded the
inaugural Nelson to Mill Award on Sunday evening out on
Long Island, where Nelson lived. And that's one of a
couple of things that mister Demill and I had in common,
was that we both wrote in Long Henry. He wrote
in longhand he used a number one pencil. I'm a
(21:03):
number two pencil person. There are a few of us
out there. And Tyler, who I just adore, author of
Accidental Tourist, among other great novels. She has this technique
where after she edits the book, she writes the entire
darn thing out in longhand to do one final edits.
And why does she do that? It slows it down,
(21:24):
and it exposes by extraneous words, false notes. And that's
the beauty of writing in longhand that it does slow
the process down a great deal.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
And as I understand it, you actually don't start a
novel like an inside job with an outline and a
sense of world. End up, you started, and then it
sort of carries you where it goes.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
I like to see about maybe a quarter of it.
That's all I need. I guess I'd like to say
that I'd write the book's sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph.
I like to think of my first draft as my outline,
and then Jamie and I will sit and read it aloud,
and then it gets edited down. I don't know about you,
(22:09):
but I believe in editing down. I find it hard
to edit up. I can add it scene or add
a chapter here. But I like to overwrite the first
draft and then edit down, down, down, down down.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Part of the different in your brilliance and my production approaches.
I hate editing.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
I always have editors, and they are always good, they
always make it better, and I just hate it. I
could never compete. I never reach your level of talent.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Oh, come on, come on. You write nonfiction, you write fiction,
you write political commentary. You're a very skilled, highly skilled
writer and stylist, and you're also an orator, and so
you know how to write a speech. You're selling yourself short.
You're being overly modest.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Well, no one has ever accused me of that, but
I will take that as a great n I appreciate
so much you and Jamie. This book is great. Do
you have a new one coming? Have you thought of
the next one?
Speaker 2 (23:03):
The only way that I can get a book out
of my head or stop tinkering with it, I had
to teach myself how to write a book in such
a short period of time. I think it's our friend
Leonardo da Vinci who said that a work of art
is never finished, it's only abandoned. I don't abandon my words.
They are taken away from me before I think this
(23:25):
everything is exactly right, and I will sit and drive
myself crazy, and the only way I can stop that
is to get going on something else. I finish the book.
I do a little bit of pre publicity work, the
kinds of things I have to do to get ready
to publish the book. But in June, I'd just like
to sit and find my way into a new book,
and so I was able to do that this June,
(23:45):
and I have forty or fifty pages of the next book.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Well, I can assure you I am looking forward eagerly.
I will try to survive the long desert between your books,
but I'm confident will be equally brilliant.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Thank you. It's more than I deserve. Gingrich, thank you
so much. Thank you. You're very kind.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
I want to thank you and beIN give Jamie my regards.
I'm such a big fan of both of you. Your
new book, and Inside Job is available now on Amazon
and bookstores everywhere, and I recommend everyone after you read it,
go back to number one and learn all about Gabriel
throughout his entire life. I really enjoyed it, and I'm
looking forward to your next book.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Oh Thank you so very much for having me. It
was wonderful to be back and good to hear your voice.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Thank you to my guest Daniel Silva. You can get
a link to buy his new book, An Inside Job
on our show page at newtsworld dot com. Newsworld is
produced by Gangrish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer
is Guernsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork
for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks
(24:51):
to the team at Gingrish three sixty. If you've been
enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and
both rate us with five stars and give us a
review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now,
listeners of news World can sign up for my three
freeweekly columns at gingrishwree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm
newt Gangrich. This is neut World.
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