RANSOM begins with a fundraiser for the arts at Edward Knight’s grand estate. Finances are tight in Britain at this point, and the arts don’t rate high in the budget. Restoration expert Gabriel Allon, the retired head of an Israeli secret spy service known as the Office, is set to speak at the gathering. He’s a big draw for the event. 

Naturally, there is a lot of mingling and rubbing of shoulders among Britain’s rich and famous, plus collectors from other countries. The party seems to be going well except that the host and hostess are conspicuously absent. Finally, Knight arrives and sits at a table, only to leave moments later after receiving a phone call. His wife, Alice Winter, does not make an appearance.

"Don’t take your eyes off of Gabriel Allon; he’s not hanging around restoring paintings. Daniel Silva has many more challenges for him. As for how he’ll top this one, we’ll have to wait and see (but hopefully not too long)."

Knight explains to Gabriel that Alice has vanished. She went on her annual girls’ trip (this year they chose Ibiza), and she never returned. Knight lays this out to Gabriel in confidence and begs him to find Alice and bring her home. He assures Gabriel that he will make it worth his while. It’s the last thing Gabriel is looking for right now. He doesn’t care about Knight’s money. He just wants the peaceful retirement he’d imagined for himself. Wasn’t all of the intrigue supposed to be behind him?
 
Reluctantly, Gabriel agrees to spend some time searching for Alice. Using all of his usual resources, including professional thief and hacker Ingrid Johansen, he discovers unsurprisingly that Alice has been kidnapped. His wife, Chiara, gave him strict orders not to act as the bagman. He promised her that he had no intention of doing anything like that. But as they say, things go sideways, and Gabriel ends up in a very bad place. He tries to negotiate his way out only to find himself dumped on the side of a road.
 
So Gabriel found Alice but lost her again. Why did the kidnappers set him free? As he works to make sense of all of this and uncover more clues, he realizes that finding Alice may be the least of their problems. Knight didn’t come fully clean about his personal situation. In reality, he got caught up with some bad actors during the real estate slump when his investments and holdings took a beating. He saw a lifeline when a man approached him with a very large check. Of course, it was an instant fix that created a self-perpetuating problem. And now, the way to extricate himself doesn’t involve money. For his “partners,” Knight can be very useful.
 
Formulating a plan, Gabriel suggests that they set up an art auction at the Knight estate. This time, though, the money they raise is a side benefit. The true target is a very specific person. His identity is unknown to them, but the hope is that the auction will expose him. As the snare continues to close, Secret Intelligence Service Director General Graham Seymour has joined the gang, plus field agent Christopher Keller and Nigel Whitcombe of the SIS. The players get to work doing what they do best. Whatever is about to happen will be catastrophic, and they all know it.
 
What started as a missing-person case becomes a deadly race against the clock to save thousands of people from rogue foreign attacks. How they do it is, as always with Gabriel, masterful. The truly frightening part, though, is how plausible their scheme is. They used drones that can be controlled from anywhere --- which, of course, includes Russia. And stopping them won’t be easy. They first have to find them. 

Don’t take your eyes off of Gabriel Allon; he’s not hanging around restoring paintings. Daniel Silva has many more challenges for him. As for how he’ll top this one, we’ll have to wait and see (but hopefully not too long).