The Janson Directive

Rating:
Summary: The Janson Directive
Review: The suspense of this novel is overpowered by the minutia. Escrutiatingly detailed descriptions of every gadget our hero uses makes one forget Janson has a directive and I, quite truthfully, found myself not cheering for him to win, but simply to get to the end of a painful book. We know Robert Ludlum knows his stuff, but in this instance, he sounds more like an encyclopedia than a novelist.

Rating:
Summary: Same old, same old... You wish!
Review: There is nothing to say against Ludlum's storylines. The same pattern, however he always manages to turn it into something exciting and unpredictable. Not so this time. Taking off to a great start, he is painting the picture of a great Hungarian philantropist, who resembles the real life, well known financial tycoon G. S.
From there on however, any seasoned thriller reader can easily predict the turn of events. Even more, the writing is sloppy, commercial, and unmotivated. Where Ludlum used to paint a picture for all of his characters, making them unpredictable, he does only the minimum necessary to fulfil his page quota. His hero's picture is more ellaborate, but one would imagine, that R.L. can come up with some new character profiles.
Why do I give two stars? Well, I have seen worse than this: The Covert-One series.

Rating:
Summary: An average thriller....nothing more, nothing less.....
Review: Typical Ludlum....steroetype characters, expected unexpectedness, predictable unpredictability. Still a good fun read if you don't feel the need to think too hard.

There is a directly plagiarized line from the movie Pulp Fiction which just sounds incredibly out of place. It involves a pair of pliers and a blowtorch!

There are fewer "Dan Brown" type narrative errors than in most thrillers of this size, although a Corvette's bodywork is described as being made of steel at one point. Really?

It would make a good movie. I think that was the idea when it was written.