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Friday, October 27, 2006
Robert Ludlum
Robert LudlumAmerican thriller writer whose violent, fast-paced books have sold some 290 million copies worldwide. Ludlum started his literary career relatively late, after working in the theatre, both as actor and producer. Ludlum's special skill is to capture the imagination of his readers from the first pages, and keep them absorbed in the story. Although critics considered his style melodramatic and the plots unbelievable, the author often used material from current events in international politics. Characteristic for Ludlum's stories is a paranoid view of the world, in which global corporations and shadowy military and governmental organizations undermine the international status quo. Heroes are thrown into a web of intrigues, where they do not know who is their real friend and who is the enemy. Finally, against all odds, they defeat seemingly superior adversaries.
The Bourne Identity (1980) started a series of novels, in which an American counter-assassin and his nearly superhuman opponent, Carlos, confront in different parts of the world. The character of Carlos was partly based on the Venezuelan-born terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, who in real life was captured in 1994 in Sudan. Carlos the Jackal has been linked to the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1872 and other acts of terrorism. He is serving a life sentence in a French prison. In The Bourne Identity the protagonist is found half-dead and without memory of who he is. It gradually turns out that he is David Webb, a young Far East scholar. Webb has got a new identity from CIA as Jason Bourne to kill Carlos, another assassin, but is betrayed by the officials. The Bourne Supremacy brought on the stage Bourne's sadistic doppelganger, who has started to execute people in Hong Kong. In the third novel, The Bourne Ultimatum, the showdown between Carlos and Bourne was set in Russia. "The Bourne Supremacy may be Mr. Ludlum's most overwrought, speciously motivated, spuriously complicated story to date. It's difficult to tell whether he's writing worse or it's just getting easier to spot his tricks. And yet - shameful to admit - one keeps reading. Is it the violence of the action? The adolescence of the fantasy? The maddening convolutions of the plot? Whatever, the effect is like dessert after certain rich meals. It's too much. One shouldn't. One doesn't really feel like it. ''Oh, my God,'' one gasps, contemplating the enormity of it. And promptly devours the entire concoction." (Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in The New York Times, March 6, 1986) The fourth novel in the series, The Bourne Legacy (2004), was written by Eric Van Lustbader (b. 1946), who has blended in his earlier works ninja mysticism, eroticism, exotic locations, and government corruption.
In Ludlum's novels multinational right-wing intrigues were often born from economic reasons. He also drew parallels between the Nazis and modern day fanatics striving for power. "When the chaos becomes intolerable, it would be their excuse to march in military units and assume the controls, initially with martial law,'' speculates one of Ludlum's characters in The Aquitaine Progression (1984). In The Matarese Circle (1979) CIA and KGB join their forces, like United States and the Soviet Union during World War II, to fight against a circle of terrorists plotting against superpowers. The Matarese dynasty returned again in The Matarese Countdown (1997), in which its members have infiltrated the CIA and try to establish a new world economic order.
Ludlum also published books under the pseudonyms Jonathan Ryder (Trevayne and The Cry of the Halidon) and Micheal Shepherd (The Road to Gandolpho) - the latter was written in humorist style. - Ludlum died of a heart attack on March 12, 2001, in Naples, Florida.
Extract from: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ludlum.htm
The Bourne Supremacy
Matlock Paper
The Cassandra Compact
The Matarese Countdown
The Road To Omaha
Aquataine Progression
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