The Sigma Protocol

Rating:
Summary: International suspense par excellence
Review: This was my first Ludlum and like many Ludlumists I cannot help but thinking my first was the best. Afterwards I tried to read all of his works but none of them tasted like Sigma. Ben Hartman, son of a rich Jewish immigrant, is shot at and chased by what he had thought by an old friend in Zurich. [By the way this starts to happen just on page 6.] A rather haphazard chain of events lead him to a secretive organisation called the Sigma AG, a group of former Nazis and their industrialist collaboraters in the West who are responsible from shaping and directing global politics a la Bilderberg. In this endeavor Ben reveals certain truths about the past of his family and the metamorphosis that the Sigma is experiencing. Equally secretive Internal Compliance Unit of US govertment assigns a second generation Latina who later becomes Ben's girlfriend. The twist after twist after twist will simply mesmerize you. Just buy it!

Rating:
Summary: Formulaic, Poorly Written, Overly Long
Review: I was disappointed in this novel. The writing was clumsy and forced, and this proved to be distracting in many instances. The book was full of poorly researched technical info (Versed is an opioid??), mock-heroic and comic-book villain dialogue, and seemingly endless contrivances designed to stretch the plot out to over 600 pages. It did not approach the quality of the Bourne novels. There was some fairly interesting dialogue and information about the moral conundrums faced by both Germans and Jews during the holocaust, and at times I really liked agent Navarro. But these good points were overwhelmed by the overall silliness of one yawner of an action sequence after another. I became so tired of this that I skimmed the last 100 pages, unable to focus any longer during a time that should have been the most riveting.

Rating:
Summary: Lacks the gripping, compelling writing found in his others
Review: Ludlum, author of such best-sellers as `The Bourne Identity', died on March 12, 2001. His output, however, has not slowed noticeably since his passing: this novel, like his others, is fast -paced, occasionally gripping and packed with a predictable ending. However, the boilerplate dialogue and movie logic, along with a macabre and hard-to-believe ending show `Ludlum' (premier writer of international intrigue) as a brand name may have run its course.

`The Sigma Protocol, is an interesting read and worth recommending, but it lacks the "gripping, compelling" writing style his other books did.

Rating:
Summary: Poorest of the Ludlums
Review: Having long ago given up on trying to get through encyclopedic novels, I decided to make an exception for one of my favorite thriller authors, Robert Ludlum, and read his 600+ page pot-boiler, The Sigma Protocal. It was the first Ludlum I'd read in years. Wish, now, I hadn't bothered. Although it starts out in typical slam-bang Ludlum fashion, with a shoot-out on a busy street in Zurich, Switzerland--and carries this fast action pace throughout the book--it is unnecessarily over-written. Examples: Three pages of laborious description are used to give us an autobiography of a just-introduced elderly woman whose apartment is invaded by a hit man. Directly following these three pages, she is killed and wiped from the story. Another instance is the waste of an entire chapter telling us every detail of how our hero, Ben Hartman, scales a mountain and tunnels through a cave to get into a top-security compound atop a mountain. Once inside, he is immediately captured. (Why not instead devote but five paragraphs to how he tried to breach the security fence, before his capture?) For my money, too many authors fall victim to this temptation: to exhibit their knowledge of intracacies, detail, and technicalities--at the expense of moving the story. In all, it was the over-writing that turned me off on this, which was perhaps, Ludlum's final work. This would have been a much better book--maybe even 5-star--had it been cut to half its length, the premise was that intriguing.

Rating:
Summary: Fast!
Review: This book of Robert Ludlum is international suspense par excellence. How can you not like a mystery novel whose hero is attacked, shot at, and chased by someone who he thought was his friend right at page 6? Ludlum deals with a secretive organization Sigma a la Bilderberg, that consists of former Nazis as well as their industrialist collaboraters who shaped and directed the post WWII world events. Ben Hartman, son of a rich Jewish immigrant, is lead by a series of attacks to his life and to people's who he wants to reach from what appears to be a myterious antagonist that wants him dead. He is to reveal the organization behind all these to save himself and to learn about his family's troubling past. In this endeavor he, his haphazard girlfriend from the Internal Compliance Unit, and the reader are subject to twist after twist after twist!

Rating:
Summary: Fine Ludlum Farewell
Review: Good book on-par with some of Ludlum's earlier efforts. An entertaining read, a bit slow in some areas but overall a good farewell from Ludlum (R.I.P.).

Rating:
Summary: Grand Slam Thriller
Review: This book was very long and descriptive. However, it is action-packed with many plot twists and turns.

Anna Navarro is a Justice Department agent who is given the assignment of finding out why a group of elderly men around the world are getting killed. These men belonged to a highly secretive organization known as Sigma. In the interim, Ben Hartman is a thirty-ish banker on a ski trip in Switzerland and as he is about to depart, an old college "friend" notices him in a hotel lobby and makes an attempt on his life but fails. As you continue to read the book, you will discover that there is a direct link between the attempted murder of Hartman and Sigma.

Anna and Ben accidentally meet each other about a third way through the novel and discover that they both have a lot in common which is the desire to learn more about Sigma and some of its past and present members.

This was a great novel with lots of good history on the many doctors who performed human experiments during (...) Germany. Of course, some of it is fiction but much of it is not after I had done my own research on the topics in this book. If you do not read any other Ludlum novel, please find time to read the Sigma Protocol.