Hi, this is Newt, due to the virus I'm recording from home, so you may notice a difference in audio quality.

On this episode of Newt's World, legendary spy and art restore Gabriel Alon has slipped quietly into Venice for a much-needed holiday with his wife and two young children.

But when Pope Paul VII dies suddenly, Gabriel has summoned a Rome by the Holy Father's loyal private secretary, Archbishop Luigi Donati.

A billion Catholic faithful have been told that the Pope died of a heart attack, Donati suspects murder.

The order is a novel of friendship and faith in a perilous and uncertain world.

I've read all 19 of his Gabriel Alon novels twice, and I'm a huge fan of his work.

I'm really pleased to welcome my guest, Daniel Silva, an award-winning number one New York Times best-selling author of 23 novels, including The Black Widow, The Other Woman, and The New Girl.

His books are critically acclaimed best-sellers around the world.

The Newt's World is a book by the Holy Father's loyal private secretary, Alon.

To do have any notion that Gabriel Alon, our restoreer of Sassin's five master, would have a career this long when he started?

I certainly did not. He was literally constructed, built, conceived to appear in a single book, the first book, which is called The Kill Artist.

It was not a title I liked, to be honest with you. It was inflicted on me by my publisher, but nevertheless, he was supposed to appear in that first book, and that was it.

I was talked into writing a second novel with Gabriel, and that novel sold more than the first novel.

Then I wrote the third book, which is The Confessor, which introduced Gabriel's ties to the Vatican. That's where they originated in that novel.

By the time I finished that book, it was pretty clear to me that I had a successful series.

At that time, in the top five of the New York Times Specialist, year in and year out, it was going to work.

Much to my surprise, I did not think that an Israeli could be a successful continuing series. I thought there was far too much anti-Israeli sentiment in the world.

Frankly, too much anti-Semitism in the world, for an Israeli to ever work in a truly mass market way.

I have been proven wrong, and no one is more surprised by the long-term success of the series than I am.

It seems to me that you had three vectors of the Vatican use that term of threat.

You had the terrorist threat from the Muslim world, you had the Russians, and then you had a unique series of problems involving the Catholic Church.

The 20 volumes actually have these three patterns woven through them.

...