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Searching... Monmouth Public Library | LP Fic Ludlum, R. 2003 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
From the bestselling author of "The Bourne Identity" and "The Sigma Protocol" comes one of his most compelling thrillers ever. Paul Janson has a difficult past that includes a shadowy, notorious career in U.S. Consular Operations. Nothing could lure him back from retirement except Peter Novak--a man who once saved Janson's life--who has been kidnapped by terrorists and is set to be executed. Now Janson finds himself marked for death as he tries to rescue his friend. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
Author Notes
Robert Ludlum was born May 25, 1927 in New York City. He enlisted in the Marines at the age of eighteen and received a B.A. from Wesleyan University in 1951.
He began acting professionally at the age of sixteen in the 1943 Broadway production of Junior Miss. He also had roles in summer stock and appeared in over 200 television dramas for such live programs as Studio One and Kraft Television Theater. He then tried producing with the 1956 Broadway production of The Owl and the Pussycat. He took the play, four years later, to his creation of Shopping-Center Theater at Playhouse-on-the-Mall in Paramus, New Jersey.
His first novel, The Scarlatti Inheritance, was published in 1971. His other works include The Matlock Paper, The Chancellor Manuscript, The Bourne Identity, The Scorpio Illusion, The Matarese Countdown, and The Bancroft Strategy. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Jonathan Ryder and Michael Shepherd. He died on March 12, 2001 at the age of 74.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Ludlum died in March 2001, but here he is again, back with yet another posthumous thriller. Such books rarely live up to the author's standards, but this one is different: it's vintage Ludlum-big, brawny and loaded with surprises. The hero is Paul Janson, a private security consultant who retired a few years ago after a notorious career as the U.S. government's go-to guy for nasty jobs no one else was willing to take. Against his better judgment, Janson accepts an assignment to rescue Peter Novak, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning philanthropist and international troubleshooter held captive by Islamic extremists on an island in the Indian Ocean. Janson pulls off the stunning rescue, but as they make their escape, Novak dies in a fiery explosion-or does he? Janson has his doubts; within hours, he finds himself targeted by separate groups of assassins for reasons that baffle him. As he zigzags his way across Europe, leaving piles of bodies at each stop, he begins to wonder who Novak really is. The answer he eventually discovers provides readers with one of Ludlum's most outrageous plot twists in years. Extremely engaging and agonizingly suspenseful, Ludlum's plot bolts from scene to scene and locale to locale-Hungary, Amsterdam, London, New York City-never settling for one bombshell when it can drop four or five. If this wild, unpredictable and colorfully cast novel is Ludlum's swan song (he supposedly left behind notes for several thrillers), it's a memorable one indeed. (Oct. 15) Forecast: Readers in the know will note that this is unadulterated Ludlum-a step up from Robert Ludlum's The Paris Option and Robert Ludlum's The Cassandra Complex. Major print and television advertising campaigns are planned, and sales should be above par for recent Ludlum releases. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Third postmortal novel from the archives of the amazing Ludlum (1927-2001), who clearly took his Toshiba laptop along to that Orient Express in the sky. This latest shows a far more sober Ludlum than 2001's madhouse The Sigma Protocol, while even The Paris Option (2002), with coauthor Gayle Lynds, points to a cooling paranoia and twilight lust for description. Here, we get a marvel of stunning physical detail, its sentences geared with lightly oiled precision parts that speed the action forward microincrementally, click by click. A full chapter is given to the midnight air currents a parachutist faces in cloud and fog after he free-falls for four miles into the villain's den. Legendary Hungarian financier and philanthropist Peter Novak, Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder and director of the Liberty Foundation, which has resolved ten international conflicts around the globe, has been kidnapped by the Kagama Liberation Front on the island of Anura in the Indian Ocean. The KLF plans to behead him on the Sunni holy day commemorating the sacrifice of Abraham. And no ransom will be accepted, since the Caliph masterminding the KLF's corps of suicide bombers wants greater notoriety. Ludlum died before 9/11, but his plot is hugely prescient, combining Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and Palestinian martyrs. Liberty Foundation calls in Paul Janson, former Navy SEAL and master nightfighter for Consular Operations (the State Department's covert branch), who has retired to run his own business. But Liberty Foundation once saved Janson's life, while a suicide bomber of Caliph's killed Janson's pregnant wife. So Janson gathers a trio of supremely capable covert-ops like himself to infiltrate Caliph's impregnable Stone Palace and rescue Novak. When the mission goes down in horror, sabotaged, Janson vows vengeance, not knowing that he himself is the one who must be destroyed-and by his home team, among others. Ludlum's best since his masterpiece of paranoia, The Bourne Identity.
Library Journal Review
It's bad enough when a man who once saved Peter Janson's life is about to be executed by terrorists. But things get worse when Janson's rescue efforts go off course. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.