Keen On

Spy novelists often make excellent moralists and the American writer Daniel Silva, author of the Gabriel Allon series of best-selling thrillers, is a particularly sharp critic of contemporary morals. His new Allon thriller, A Death in Cornwall, focuses on money laundering, murder and mayhem in the art world. The novel is set in the contemporary United Kingdom of the (once) ruling Tory party where international criminals use expensive art to feed their vanity and launder their ill gotten cash. This conversation with Silva is part one of our focus this week on the fetid underbelly of the international art scene. Tomorrow, we’ll feature a conversation with the Scottish writer Andrew O’Hagan, author of Caledonian Road, about the moral corruption of not just the UK’s politics and its cultural economy, but also of art critics themselves. Daniel Silva is the award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Unlikely Spy, The Mark of the Assassin, The Marching Season, The Kill Artist, The English Assassin, T