


Really, only one character emerged in this book who was genuinely interesting: Echo, Philippe d'Anjou, returns from the previous novel, seemingly a different character, this time around more of a magnificent old commando bastard and mentor figure. Marie was far less formidable than in Identity. Characters also really suffered here: Bourne's internal conflict was just a throwback to the previous novel, and we waste approximately 300 pages on his split personality ramblings. In the end, the book was far less interesting than the Bourne Identity, perhaps because there was less for Bourne to do as the man being manipulated rather than manipulating everyone else. The scenery is a bit interesting and the plot from the first hundred pages or so appeared just convoluted enough that I wanted to see what happened in the end, or I would have been done with this book by the end of half an hour.

Where to start? It's bloated, racist and dull. Well, this was the worst book I've read in a long time. The Bourne movies, starring Matt Damon in the title role, have been commercially and critically successful ( The Bourne Ultimatum won three Academy Awards in 2008), although the story lines depart significantly from the source material. A non-Ludlum book supposedly inspired by his unused notes, Covert One: The Hades Factor, has also been made into a mini-series.

Some of Ludlum's novels have been made into films and mini-series, including The Osterman Weekend, The Holcroft Covenant, The Apocalypse Watch, The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum. Ludlum also published books under the pseudonyms Jonathan Ryder and Michael Shepherd. He is the author of The Scarlatti Inheritance, The Chancellor Manuscript, and the Jason Bourne series- The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum-among others. There are more than 210 million of his books in print, and they have been translated into thirty-two languages. Robert Ludlum was the author of twenty-seven novels, each one a New York Times bestseller.
