From #1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva comes a thriller about a beautiful raven-haired girl who arrives each morning to boarding school in a motorcade fit for a head of state. Her father is Khalid bin Mohammed, the much-maligned crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Once celebrated for his daring social and religious reforms, he is now reviled for his role in the murder of a dissident journalist. And when his only child is brutally kidnapped, he turns to the one man he can trust to find her before it is too late.
The New Girl shows very clearly what any progressive ruler in the Saudi kingdom is up against. The author offers a crash course in Wahhabi, the strictly orthodox Sunni Muslim sect that has a covenant with the House of Saud ... Readers who don’t care about politics will certainly still enjoy The New Girl, which spins an excellent yarn. A shocking explosion, a chance encounter, a radioactive toxin, a lie to a mole and a super twist at the end are all elements that make the book’s 468 pages fly by.
... another riveting, twisting tale of espionage that further cements [Silva's] legacy as one of the greatest novelists the genre has ever known ... Frankly, it’s hard to fathom that Silva could ever top himself after last year’s The Other Woman, but he’s done just that. The New Girl is one of his fastest-moving thrillers yet (after a slower opening that sets the foundation for what’s to come) and features a number of perfectly-timed twists that constantly raise the stakes, forcing Allon, who is under steady duress, to adjust on the fly with only several days to connect all the dots and take action before it’s too late. Without giving away the meat of the plot, it’s one of Silva’s most timely, ripped-from-the-headlines stories to date—and, as his work is prone to do, at times it even reads a bit too close for comfort ... He’s one of the all-time greats for a reason, and he’s showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon . . . Reading Daniel Silva’s expertly crafted novels is to witness a master at work, and The New Girl is as close to perfect as you could ever hope for a thriller to be.
As expected in a story of international intrigue, fast cars, boats, planes, and high body counts abound. Not expected are the surprise emotional trap doors in scenes which drop the reader into the same pits of perfect despair suffered by the characters. Also unexpected to the point of improbable is the general storyline ... [Sarah Bancroft's] main role in this novel is to be cloying and annoying...Her persona is so distracting it seriously diminishes the impact of an otherwise decent spy story ... just a decent spy story and no more. It is a dumping ground of random thoughts. The title itself seems randomly selected. By page 11, Khalid’s daughter is no longer the mysterious new girl at the private Swiss academy. By then, she is well on her way to becoming a prisoner ... Silva also makes it clear that the spy business is tough and best left to the menfolk. Hopefully, in Allon novel number 20, Silva can embrace the same epiphany of enlightenment enjoyed by Khalid by book’s end.
