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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780451209313
ISBN number: 0451209311
Label: Signet
Manufacturer: Signet
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 528
Printing Date: September 02, 2003
Publishing house: Signet
Release Date: September 02, 2003
Sale Popularity Level: 36455
Studio: Signet
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
When a commercial airliner is blown out of the sky off the East Coast, the CIA scrambles to find the perpetrators. A body is discovered near the crash site with three bullets to the face: the calling card of a shadowy international assassin. Only agent Michael Osbourne has seen the markings before-on a woman he once loved.
Now, it's personal for Osbourne. Consumed by his dark obsession with the assassin, he's willing to risk his family, his career, and his life-to settle a score...
Amazon.com Review:
Bestselling novelist Daniel Silva (author of The Unlikely Spy) draws upon his experience as a foreign correspondent and a Washington journalist in The Mark of the Assassin. Set in London, Cairo, Amsterdam, and Washington, the story line follows CIA case agent Michael Osbourne as he attempts to locate the terrorists who shot down an airliner off the coast of Long Island. Osbourne has two main antagonists: Delaroche, a KGB-trained expert assassin ordered to kill the handful of people who know the truth, including Osbourne, and the corrupt political culture of Washington, which ominously stymies him at every turn. There's a love story at the core of this book, as well as a brave endeavor by Osbourne to reconcile a mystery in his past with a present he has not fully accepted. The prose is slick, and readers will find themselves racing through these pages as the body count grows and the conclusion nears. The Mark of the Assassin is a worthy effort from a rising star.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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This is a good thriller in that I read through the whole thing fairly quickly, and the use of setting was interesting because it kept changing around from France to Amsterdam and such. But it was hard to have any feelings for either of the main characters. I suppose it's good to have some detachment in an assassination novel, but here it was perhaps too extreme.
Rated by buyers 
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This book could've been a fantastic thriller. All of the ingredients are present: a ruthless and brilliant assassin and a capable protagonist as his foil. The book was greatly diminished by it's portrayal of its protagonist's marriage to a high-powered lawyer obsessed with getting pregnant. It's artlessly handled and derails the pace of the book.
Rated by buyers -
This is one of those books that you should read when you're on a plane. You're somewhat distracted, you're sleepy, and you need something you can shove in your pocket absentmindedly when the plane lands. You *don't* need something involved, esoteric, or complicated. This book fits that bill perfectly.
Our hero is a CIA "case officer" who hunts terrorists. For years he's been tracking, vaguely, an assassin who used to work for the KGB but has branched out on his own with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Interestingly, highly-paid assassins don't make that much money, so he lives in a cottage on the coast of Brittany and paints watercolors, which supplement his income. As the book starts, the assassin has been sent on an unusual mission, and when he concludes it everyone's looking for him, including his old nemesis at the CIA. There are all sorts of twists and turns to the plot, but nothing particularly original or surprising.
I liked the way the book worked out, after a fashion. The characters are reasonably good, if a bit stereotypical, and the action is very well-done. The whole thing reads quickly. It's sort of on the level of a Stuart Woods spy novel, nothing really there, but suitably diverting.
Rated by buyers 
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I didn't get far with this story. When a bunch of unlikely conspirators from democracies and tyrannies meet in a luxury villa on a mountain top, indulge themselves inordinately, agree to kill a great many innocent men, women and children for their own profit, then leave and let the villa burn to the ground, I gave up and threw the book away. This author can write a good spy story, and has written several that are both gripping and sufficiently plausible, but this isn't one of them.
Rated by buyers -
If I had read this book when it was published I'm sure I would have had a much different response to it. If, for instance, I could still regard the CIA as a credible agency and not a useless, terrible joke I might have found the premise of a dynamic, competent CIA agent believable. Since the average CIA agent has been proven to be an inept bureaucrat the entire concept of the book is laughable. Add the typical liberal viewpoint of anything conservative and you just have a pale, lifeless version of LaCarre. Too bad since based on "Unlikely Spy" I thought I was going to like Silva's books.
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