The Bourne Identity

Rating:
Summary: The Bourne Identity: A Reader's Delight
Review: The Bourne identity is quite possibly Robert Ludlum's greatest work. Ludlum exemplifies his genious in both the big picture and the small picture of his story. He manipulates the reader through a terrifying amount of dizzying twists and turns that leaves the reader satisfied. The dialog is written in such a human manner that the reader can easily relate to the characters in the story.
The story begins with a chilling account of a man being shot of the side of a boat during a storm in the Caribbean. After native fisherman find him near-death, a curious but generous doctor performs surgery on him and helps him to recover. When he awakens from his coma, he cannot remember anything about himself or his past life, including his own name. However, the doctor removes a microfilm implanted in his leg that has a bank account number of a Swiss bank. The man follows this lead. When he arrives in Europe, however, he finds himself robbing innocent people at gunpoint in order to gain a few thousand dollars. Because he is instictively doing this, he assumes that he is either a terrorist or an assassin. The Swiss bank account contains the name "Jason Bourne," as well as millions of dollars and a few weapons.
Amidst Bourne's own confusion of finding out his own identity, he is being hunted by an Carlos the Jackel, a legendary assassin who knows his identity and will do anything to kill him.
Throughout the novel, Bourne is trying to escape American intelligence agents. Without giving the story away, the agents mistake Bourne's actions as negative to them, and therefore they are trying to kill or capture him.
The only light in Jason Bourne's life is Marie. Jason meets Marie by taking her hostage and ordering her at gunpoint to drive him out of the area. She at first dismisses his story that he has amnesia as psycho-babble from the lunatic that he seemed to be, but later believed his story. Marie turned out to be an accountant from Canada. Marie provided Bourne with money that he needed in order to dodge both Carlos and the CIA and to find out his true identity.

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Summary: Bourne in a tour de force!
Review: The Bourne Identity, the first in a series of three Bourne books, is one of the best books I've ever read. I simply could not put this book down. If you like Clancy, but wish he didn't drag on at times, you'll love Bourne. Bourne is always on the move, discovering more and more about who he is and what he's capable of. This book is action packed, but don't expect complex plot twists or the character developement of Literature. This is spy fiction at its best!

Rating:
Summary: dissapointed
Review: I guess I just expected too much. There was some really good action, but the characters and the plot development were lacking to say the least. Bourne meets up with the love interest Marie and their relationship was just too unbelievable. I couldn't figure out why they were together and it was like Ludlum was just inventing reasons on the fly for her to hang around and be useful. I was all ready to forgive as the story reached the climax, expecting a big finish and maybe a twist that I hadn't expected. But it flopped HARD! He just wrapped it up with such a wimpy ending, very dissapointed and wouldn't recommend it unless you just want a few action sequences (and there weren't even enough of those in my opinion)

Rating:
Summary: It's Not Literature
Review: Lots of action, implausible plot, paper-thin characters. Bourne is an interesting idea overworked. Ludlum must have started out as a sports writer who describes every punch. The "hero" is so fantastic that you can hardly wait to see how he will survive his latest predicament. Not believable, but entertaining. Would make a good comic book. Too complex to be a movie, as recently demonstrated by the recent film, which uses just a few of the situations in the book.

Rating:
Summary: Heavy on potential, light on delivery.
Review: A very engaging premise with a great deal of promise, but only middling success at delivering the goods. This book would have been much better had it been tighter and more consistent. While much of the intrigue is dated by today's standards, it still has the power to grab the reader's attention. Unfortunately the author's inelegance makes parts of the book tedious and even onerous. I found myself rolling my eyes at several of the situations the characters found themselves in, and was incredulous at the murders at the "top secret" office in New York, coupled with the totally unbelievable "fingerprint on a glass" bit of evidence planting. The ending was just plain bad.

Ludlum did several things very well -- the basis for Bourne's existence was well thought out and plausible, as was Cain's mission (raison d'être). I appreciated how he handled the character of Marie, making her competent and intelligent (and an economist!) rather than a typical damsel in distress. I imagine his scenery and setting were accurate, although those details added nothing to the story as far as I was concerned.

I'm tempted to give Ludlum the benefit of the doubt since this book was written more than twenty years ago. I'm not sure yet if I'll read another book in the series.

Rating:
Summary: Ludlum novels
Review: I thought this was a really great book. It was the first Robert Ludlum novel I read. Since then I have read many more and I must say his books are good. The reason I read this book was so I could see the movie. But the movie isn't about the book at all. This book is about a man who doesn't know who he is. And when he is picked up he has very strange abilities for a normal man, or so he thinks. I won't tell you how the story goes, but it keeps you on the edge of your seat, and you'll want to keep reading.

Rating:
Summary: Groovy cool!
Review: I picked up this dandy after seeing the excellent Matt Damon movie. As many have said, the book is a totally different story, but both are very good in their own ways. The premise is the same. Man loses memory and finds he has some disturbing gifts as he tries to regain said memory.

Ludlum's novel is chock full of suspense, thrills and kills. The action seems almost non stop, but remarkably, there seems to be room enough for a well executed plot.

The story moves along with the action and Ludlum only lets the reader know enough to be only a couple of steps ahead of Bourne. We find out pretty much as he finds out. Another thing the author does well is put our hero (or is he an anti-hero? You'll find out soon enough) into situations that the reader has no idea what he can do to get out of it. And the really cool thing is that sometimes, even Bourne doesn't realize he's in these situations.

The pace flies and Ludlum ties the complicated plot together satisfyingly enough at the end that the reader is left happy, yet hungering for more "Bounre".

Rating:
Summary: great book
Review: filled with action, leaves a mystery @ the end of every chapter. well written.

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Summary: Very good spy thriller
Review: After finishing this novel, I promptly ran out and picked up The Hades Factor. This was surprising for me, considering I don't normally care for spy novels - I've tried to read LeCarre, and, to my knowledge, have never actually managed to finish one. I guess that's some sort of bar as to whether the novel's any good or not.

The plot is simple at first, but grows more complicated as the twists and turns continue. The main character, who we later learn is named Jason Bourne (I hope that's no spoiler), washes up in the Mediterranean Sea and has no memory. He's not without his gifts, though. He is fully trained with weapons of all sorts and has military-like reflexes. He acts without thinking. The novel follows him closely as he wanders instinctively into the world and tries to find out who he is. At every stop, somebody is hunting him. He needs to find out why. (I hope I'm not saying too much in disclosing that he will eventually tied in with a network of assassins, who compete for supremacy.)

I found the novel worked on several levels for me. I particularly liked the moral dilemmas Mr. Bourne had to go through early in the novel, when he's just finding out who he is (or was). He has people he doesn't know firing at him - does he fire back? how does he know they're bad? He has to take a hostage to stay alive, but how far should he go? He doesn't know what he's done, what he's wanted for - is it worth killing an innocent bystander for? And, of course, what if, in his past life he actually had deserved to be killed? Could he risk bringing somebody into his world knowing this?

There are also issues with loyalty and personal loss. Even in the extreme distress of their situations, the characters are able to dig for deeper meaning, in people's eyes, and in their hearts. It isn't all guns and politics. I found the loyalties between some of the characters very touching, as when Marie St. Jacques stands by Jason because he saves her - even thought he'd previously held a gun to her head.

Of course, there is the standard fair share of shooting and running and all-round suspense. At every turn, there's something forcing Jason to keep his wits about him and make impulse decisions. It all makes for a great read.

Matty J

Rating:
Summary: A laugh a minute, but a sad laugh at Ludlum's expense.
Review: So *this* is the best-of-genre, best-of-author novel, correct?

I'm not impressed. I'm disappointed, actually, and so thoroughly frustrated by two rampant flaws in Ludlum's work that I found it hard to finish the book.

One, Ludlum has constructed a plot with so many poor and impossible devices that I now see why the genre had acquired a bad name. *This* novel may be the progenitor of all bad cliches for spy thrillers; if not, it certainly represents the pinnacle of achievement. Example: the protagonist's companion has an omniscient ability to root out the intent of the US government; more likely, Ludlum found no way to tie in his loose threads other than to make her a forensic genius. Or: the convenience of all encounters working to our protagonist's advantage. The general who sees something trustworthy in his face, the woman who sees something courageous in his actions, neither holding any grudges or connecting past behaviour to the present. Can you say "inconsistent"?

The characters are unbelievable. It's as if I'm reading a parody, but since it's played straight, it's even worse. For Ludlum to play off these ridiculous characterizations, his tongue would have to be *through* his cheek and not in it.

Two, and this is by far the most egregious, is that this novel was far, far longer than it needed to be. The pacing is uneven; the beginning was hyper and subsequently, all chapters seem subdued in comparison. However, the necessary buildup for the next part of the roller coaster is wholly inadequate. And the complexity of the plot is unbelievable, both in scope and execution. There's a secret government agency, but it's imbued with good people; there's a secret assassination cartel, but it has admirable ethics; the protagonist just happens to hook up with a beautiful woman who falls in love with him - loves him! - in a matter of a few weeks; the protagonist consistently outwits a professional killer, apparently just by going to school for it.

Oh, would that I could get back the time spent in reading this thing. The reviews for this book serve as poor indicators of what's to be found; let this sacrificial review be a warning to readers of Andrew Vachss, Stephen Hunter, even Tom Clancy. You'll find no consistency or solid writing here. Don't pay to read this book.