When the Cold War ended, many forecasted the end of the modern espionage novel. Gone was the mighty Soviet empire, and with it, the much-loved, tension-filled novels involving conflicted protagonists, double agents, exotic locales, and stolen secrets. Then, in 1996, a young author named Daniel Silva emerged on the scene with The Unlikely Spy, an intrigue-filled novel about a British professor recruited by his country’s intelligence service during World War II. Silva’s debut was lauded by critics and fans, and heralded the writing career of one of the most commercially and critically successful espionage novelists of the last decade. In the following years, Silva published two other highly successful action-packed thrillers, The Mark of the Assassin (1998) and The Marching Season (1999). But it was The Kill Artist (2000) that firmly cemented Silva’s reputation as the modern-day heir to John le Carré, Len Deighton, Graham Greene, and Anthony Price.