Airplane fodder...Ludlum writes great thrillers. Picked up this oldie but goodie on the cheap at a yard sale or something.As I was reading this I thought, "Hmmm, this could make a good movie. Maybe two movies given the depth." When I finished it I looked around to see if there was a sequel. Imagine the representative from Colorado as the president... What I found was the prequel, currently in production as a movie! Leo DiCaprio as the lead. Ugh.A little dated by today's standards in terms of tec...

Good writing (of course,it's Ludlum). But... Amazingly convoluted plot, and so loo-o-ong. By the time I reached page 400, I was crawling on the floor from sheer exhaustion, checking every 30 minutes how many pages I still have to battle through. (The total in this edition is 678.) More than once, I considered dropping the book, but that would probably have put a hole in the floor (just kidding). By the time I finished, I was seeing double and my tongue was hanging out of my mouth.Not that it's n...

I'm re-reading Ludlum. He's often copied, borrowed from, outright stolen from, but nobody comes close. He crams more ideas in one book, than any other writer out there. Story unbelievable? Who cares! It is a fun, well written wild ride of a book, and at 770+ pages over all too soon. Nobody does (did) it better. Highy recommended.

Great book. Read it years ago and went back to reread. Still awesome! Time to add more Ludlum to my 'to-read' pile.

12/23/09 This looks like my next read. Mom got me an autographed copy a number of years ago -- well before I appreciated the value of reading. I'll let you know what I find. 12/26 I wouldn't have recognized the names of most of the places in this book 30 years ago, when it was written, but with the new world order, I'm becoming too sadly familiar with terrorism and its locales. Even 20 years later, terrorism hasn't changed much!1/11 This is a long book! I hope to finish by the end of January! Go...

Take out the romance angle and there's a good story here. (Please note that this is coming from a romance author so...)

I read this for the first time over ten years ago. Its a quite dense tome, and my copy had very tiny type-script lettering but I remember thinking that R.L. must be really smart to have written something like this, I was so impressed by his depth of imagination and flair for the dramatic ( what can I say, I was 13). Now years later, I'm still impressed, by his flamboyance and blatant over-the-top hero!I keep returning to this book every couple of years, and its like its new again..and I can't he...

This novel is frustrating, insubstantial and very very improbable. A caucasian US Congressman dons dark makeup to pass for an Arab, infilrates a terrorist organization in Oman, convinces them he is a fellow terrorist, and somehow foils their plot. All this despite his obvious non-native accent which isn't even mentioned by Robert Ludlum. He then keeps the entire caper a secret until one covert agent recognizes him from a photograph.The only interesting plot involves a secret star chamber-like or...

maybe 4 & 1/2. The first half left me wondering how well the author portrayed the Arab world, but it moved quickly. The last half was so intriguing and thought provoking that I couldn't put the book down, and it's a very long book! I kept stopping to discuss some of the ideas with my sounding board, my husband. It's disturbing to read that there could be a government within the government (so to speak) that causes us to pit ourselves against ourselves. So often we believe what we read in the new...

So much for the suspension of disbelief. An unbelievable character in an unbelievable plot doing unbelievable things. I could only get through this novel by treating it as satire, and laughing with the author and publishers who conspired to make the critics believe it was a thriller.

I lasted about 50 pages (approx. a tenth of book). Had to mercifully put it down. It's bad. The writing is static, the characters are asinine (the protagonist is a Caucasian US Congressmen who 1. speaks a foreign language, 2. speaks Arabic fluently, and 3. represents a rural Colorado district -- because you know rural Colorado districts always elect junior politicians that are fluent in Arabic. And to top it off, the protagonist literally dons skin coloring to look like an Arab and then infiltra...

Robert Ludlum and I are breaking up. I am serious, no counseling... I am really pissed. This book was awful, characters were flat and stereotypical. The book was WAYYYYYYYY too long and verbose, please pay someone to throw out every sentence that includes a descriptor of a person rather than a name (stated the angry pink haired, sassy lady). Honestly, I loved The Bourne books and I will likely read another Ludlum book but this one was horrible. I only finished it because I am in a reading challe...

Settle in for a long ride. No better, no worse than most political thrillers, I guess. Way dated now and probably was better in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. For a book fair find during the Covid Lockdown, it was fine, but somebody please tell Ludlum to edit down his text! Good Lord he just drones on and repeats the same info over and over. The first 250 pages are really skip-able. Every cliche’ in the book is included... even the mafia and gun runners.

I keep forgetting that I need to concentrate if I'm planning to read a book by Robert Ludlum. Seem to spend half my time confused about what is going on.Enjoyable book in 2 halves - 1st half concentrates on a crisis in the Middle East and then the 2nd on the repercussions when the hero returns home and is catapulted to the top of political life.

Has to be one of the most idiotic books I've ever read.It twists historic events, antisemetic at some points, the dialogues are not natural, the sotry line is not believable, it's not funny when it tries to be and fails to create even for a second.I abondened it the moment I got my hands on a different book.This book is comparable to reality TV. It's THAT stupid.

If it has one star I liked it a lot If it has two stars I liked it a lot and would recommend itIf it has three stars I really really liked it a lot If it has four stars I insist you read it If it has five stars it was life changing

Just nope. Ridiculous.....everything.Hard pass.

Finished this book today. It was a nice read that took me a long time to finish (used it as a bedtime book). I liked the story, I liked the whole atmosphere. It was a Ludlum like I expected. Many storylines, lots of characters. A plausible plot, for the most part. A few action scenes (chapters) were less to my liking because they were too much, too good to be true or whatever term you want to use for it. But the story isn't finished yet, even though I've read the last page. So hopefully I can ge...

Good read.

My first Ludlum, which at 900+ pages, was a meaty start (in fact I read a few other books while reading this one). I was a little nervous there'd be a jingoistic undertone to the story but nope, there is a lot of exploration of all sides, particularly with regards to character development. Like a few other reviewers I was fairly ho-hum that the blue-eyed lead character, US Congressman Evan Kendrick, would've made a convincing Arab, but I ran with it and I'm glad I did. It became one of those boo...