Daniel Silva was ready to let Gabriel Allon retire but global headlines inspired him to bring the famed spy books back

Daniel Silva.Topping the best seller list more often than the Bible.No.

1 on the list — his 26th book in the Gabriel Allon series, “Ransom” — is about a Middle East agent art specialist ex spy who always nails the fink and whose wife seems never to grow older or less gorgeous, unlike the rest of us.Silva: “I once let my lead character retire from his Israeli secret service connection, but inspiration came from that Copenhagen Airport drone incident last year.European leaders, scheduled days later for a meeting, grabbed drones, signal jammers, whatever signal they could to protect them.

That was this book’s inspiration.“I write in my head at night.I love it.

I work at my job, stay at it all day long.Only I find the work longer and harder now than when I was younger.

The thought is a limited amount of time’s left.”Cindy: Ever effed up a fact?“I preserve spontaneity.No detailed outline.

Once, I mixed up an Escalade with another car, but fact-checkers always check.I write longhand.

Pencil.Yellow legal pads.

As I finish one book, the next takes shape in my head.I have little pieces of paper everywhere.

I finally allowed my central character to retire from his longtime Israeli secret service position.But readers and my publisher loved him, so now he’s just a little changed to an art restorer who once was a spy.”“Early 30s I wrote my first book.

In secret.No contract.

A World War II thriller.If it flopped, I wanted to fail entirely in private.

I was then a CNN producer who’d been a foreign correspondent.”Incorporating anything about today’s Middle East conflict?“No interest in writing about it.I don’t think many have interest in reading about it.

But I’ll give you a clue about my next.I’m into studying Botticelli.

Florence’s Uffizi Gallery has his largest collection.Starts with four friends from Cambridge on holiday in Ibiza, and only three come home.

And that’s all I’ll say.“Except one person recently asked me ...