2013 "First Edition" stated on copyright page; Harper Collins publishers, New York; hardbound; very good condition with unmarked pages; dust jacket very good.
 
Description -
The English Girl is a 2013 spy novel by Daniel Silva. It is the thirteenth Gabriel Allon series. It was released in July 2013. It reached the top of The New York Times bestseller list on July 25, 2013 and number 5 on the Wall Street Journal's list.
 
Plot -
British political worker Madeline Hart is kidnapped in Corsica and former Israeli spy and assassin Gabriel Allon is soon invited by deputy director Graham Seymour of MI5 to find her as she is the mistress of British Prime Minister Jonathan Lancaster and was made by her kidnappers to film a testimonial implicating Lancaster in order to blackmail him.
 
Gabriel goes to crime boss Don Orsati in Corsica who once agreed to have him killed at the behest of Swiss bankers (in The English Assassin) to ask for guidance and Orsati both lets Gabriel use the services of Christopher Keller, a former SAS officer believed dead (and Gabriel's erstwhile would-be assassin) and tells him that a man named Paul came to ask for a fast boat and points him to smuggler Marcel Lacroix in Marseilles.
 
Gabriel and Keller capture Lacroix, who upon torture gives up local crime syndicate member René Brossard as his immediate contact and who says that when he learned it was a high-profile kidnapping he demanded more money and plans to meet with Brossard in Aix the next day to receive it. Keller kills Lacroix, and Gabriel and Keller keep watch on Lacroix's meeting site to follow Brossard to a villa in the Luberon. Keller monitors the villa for a couple days while Gabriel jets off to Paris to update Graham, but when they storm the house together one barely surviving criminal reports that Madeline left three days earlier.
 
With the trail cold and the blackmailer's deadline near...