Terrorists of the Islamic State detonate a massive bomb at a building in Paris where a conference on antisemitism in France is taking place; among those killed is Gabriel Allon's friend Hannah Weinberg.

Allon, working with a French counterterrorism unit and the Jordanian intelligence service, discovers that the man behind this operation calls himself Saladin and he is recruiting European women to assist his bombers.

In the Foreword, Daniel Silva clarifies that his manuscript of this novel was already well developed when, on November 13, 2015, armed suicide bombers attacked in Paris, most notably at the Bataclan theater, and killed about 130 people.

The plot of The Black Widow was of course based on informed speculation, but it came so close to the real story that "it suddenly wasn’t anything that was even remotely entertaining.

"[1] In his Foreword to the novel Silva says, "After briefly considering setting aside the typescript, I chose to complete it as originally conceived, as though the tragic events had not yet occurred in the imaginary world where my characters live and work."