If you've seen The Bourne Identiy movies starring Matt Damon, but you've not read the book by Robert Ludlum upon which the movies are loosely based, you owe it to yourself to read this early 80s spy-thriller.

The original premise: a man wakes up in the Mediterranean with amnesia. He's an undercover US operative with the name Jason Bourne, yet he doesn't remember that his mission was to expose and kill the world's deadliest assassin, Carlos the Jackal (a historical figure from the 70s). Because he can't remember who he is, he doesn't check in with his handlers at the CIA, who in turn assume Bourne as turned traitor. Bourne is the only human being who can identify the Jackal. Hence, he is hunted by the CIA and the Jackal.

Man, this is some plot, and Ludlum pulls it off splendidly.

At more than five hundred paperback pages, it's a heavy-hitter of a novel, but well worth the time. Ludlum takes the reader to exotic locations all over the world, writes about world politics in an entertaining way while at the same time not letting the reader feel like he's learning something in the process. And the twists and turns Ludlum can cram into a story. Wow!

But what I like most about The Bourne Identity are the characters. Jason Bourne is strong yet vulnerable, resourceful yet completely believable. He gets hurt and experiences pain when he has to fight. He suffers through incredible emotional dilemmas and mental instability. I found myself cheering for him, not just wondering how it would all turn out, but actually cheering him on and feeling what he was feeling.

I don't want to reveal more of the plot, but please, please, please, if you've only seen the movie and haven't read the book, fix that as soon as you can.

Oh, I'll leave you with this last bit of info, and I hope it doesn't cause some of you to jump the gun and read the ending of the story. I first read this book back in junior high or high school, back in the early 80s, and I still remember the last narrative paragraph and two lines of dialogue at the end. All I'll say is this: as a young teen boy, when I read those lines, I cried.

'Nuff said about The Bourne Identiy.

My next review will be a bit of change of pace from horror, fantasy, and spy-thrillers. But it does involve some playing with time, and it has one of the strongest and most sympathetic female characters I've read in a long time.

Stay tuned, and please, leave your thoughts and comments to add to the discussions!

To me this book is crap and the movies based on the author's stories so much better that one must always remember these titles if a debate comes up about movies not doing the book justice. The dialogue, characters and love interest are just plain silly. If you read it once when you were 18, try reading it again and see what happens with your new perspective on life and the world.

Cain is for Charlie and Delta is for Cain



Classic old school 80’s spy novel packed with action, drama and suspense. Written by Ludlum and not the grave digging wannabes.

Fishermen in the Mediterranean Sea rescue a barely alive man floating in the water. The man has no memory of who he is or how he got there. His rescuers take him to a doctor who finds the man has information of a Zurich bank account surgically implanted in his hip. Desperate to find out who he is, the man travels to the Zurich bank to find clues to his identity. He finds he has an account of 5 million dollars and a name Jason Bourne. Not a bad day but the day ain't over yet. Sounds like the movie, but wait, it is not at all. Of course no one leaves a bank with that amount of money unscathed. (Cue the bad guy music.) The amnesiac is attacked by men after leaving with the money and it is not a robbery. They want Bourne dead and he does not know why. Frustrated by not knowing his past, survival instincts kick in Bourne takes a hostage, a Canadian economist named Marie St. Jacques to use as a human shield and to drive him around Zurich. Hey, he does not have a driver license. Bourne later saves St. Jacques from being raped and murdered by the baddies and she falls in love with him. Yeah lady don't blame him for your predicament. Anyway Marie helps Bourne find clues to his identity and fight spies, nightmare flash backs of his past and assassins led by the world’s most dangerous man, the elusive Carlos. Carlos has a world wide network of spies working for him. Super bad ass Carlos is also committing murders around the globe and framing Bourne for them, making Bourne a wanted man everywhere. Bourne has to find and kill Carlos or he will be killed by Carlos.

A bit melodramatic but full of energy and very entertaining. Fun adventure around the globe. The best of the Ludlum novels.

Sorry if you loved this book, I HATED it. Maybe it was above my reading level. There were just too many "alpha, bravo,cain, delta...Cain is for Charlie, Delta is for Cain!" This book put me to sleep so many nights it is surprising that I finished it. I just kept hoping that jason bourne would die...Good thing I shop at Goodwill and it only cost me 50 cents! Everyone tells me that I should give the movie a chance and that it is better than the book, but I ask, won't it remind me of the book and bring all those bad memories back?

While perusing the library shelves for something new to read, I came across The Bourne Identity, a 1980’s era Cold War espionage novel by Robert Ludlum. I'm not usually a reader of this genre of fiction, but based on what I felt had been an excellent film, I borrowed the book.

The 1980 novel (which spawned the 2002 film) opens with a man barely clinging to life being discovered by fishermen, nearly frozen to death in the cold French Mediterranean sea. He has sustained several gunshot wounds including a quite serious one to his head. As he begins to recover, he realizes that he doesn't know who he is; he has lost his identity. With only one clue to his identity, he sets out to determine who he is.

He soon discovers his name is Jason Bourne, and along with that discovery comes the realization that a number of unpleasant parties want to see him dead. He discovers he has skills in many areas he didn't know he had; he speaks several languages, he is proficient at armed and unarmed combat, and can easily slip into roles that allow him to gain information or disappear in a crowd. Using these skills along with bits and pieces of his slowly recovering memory, he slowly pieces his identity back together.

The plot was well paced from first page to last, but never rushed. The book was a real "page turner" for me; I was drawn in right from the first page, and I ended up reading the book straight through, staying up all night!

Ludlum is an excellent storyteller. His vibrant descriptions of people and places really helped bring the story to life. As Bourne discovered or reacted to each development, I felt as if I were there with him, or perhaps watching from across the street.

It's my opinion that novels lose a lot of character development when adapted to the "silver screen", and for that reason I feel that novels are always far more entertaining than their Hollywood screenplay adaptations. The Bourne Identity is no exception.

All the characters (even the lesser and peripheral ones) are well developed; as the story progresses, each has their own unique perspective on the matters at hand. Because the characters were so well developed, most of the complex concepts the novel explored were explained entirely through dialogue between the characters. Through his characters, Ludlum exposes his readers to the complex world of world banking, international diplomacy, as well as the roles of the NSA, CIA, and the Office of the President (past and present) in shaping world events.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and would happily recommend it to anyone, with a caveat: The book can be a vocabulary builder. I had to look a number of words up in the dictionary while reading the book. However, it was well worth my time to do so; I'm sure I absorbed a few of those "fancy" words, and maybe I'll remember what they mean next time I see them again! So don’t let a few “big words” stand in your way of enjoying a truly entertaining read!

There are two more "Bourne" series books; The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum. If the other two are as fun to read as this book was, I'm sure I'll probably be pulling another all-nighter!

The best opening scenes ever set a compelling premise.

3.5

I loved the movie (Matt Damon one), I like the book, but I did not love the book. My biggest complaint is that in this espionage thriller there were a lot of political twists and turns that sometimes bored me or became too hard to fully understand. Another thing is the whole Stockholm syndrome thing that did not work too well for me. It left me asking way too many questions.

I love Ludlum's style of writing. He's the kind of writer that explains concepts and action well without being too wordy/preachy. I always wanted to do this to my short stories but I always end up either saying way too much or way too little to paint a realistic scene where characters are interacting in a non-wooden way.

I am not sure if I will track down the rest of the novels in this series but I will definitely pick it up if I happen to pass them in my local book store. I did watch all the Bourne movies and I loved all of them, except the last one which was just "meh".

The first book of the Bourne trilogy series, The Bourne Identity begins the tale of Jason Bourne, one of the US government's greatest assassin creations, rescued by fishermen off the French coast. The only problem is that the incident that put him adrift in the water, bullet-ridden and unconscious, had resulted in amnesia. He does not know his name nor his profession. He only knows what his body has been trained to do. The adventure starts, and can only start, with the only piece of information Jason Bourne has...a Swiss bank account number, found imprinted on a minute negative surgically implanted in his hip. With only that to go on to find his true identity, Jason heads to Switzerland. What he finds there leads him to the beginning of a non-stop race to find out who he really is, who he works for and most importantly, a race for his life as others are determined to kill him. He begins to piece together information about himself, his past and his employer...and ultimately learns too fast the deception, betrayal and danger involved in espionage. I loved this book, an absolute thriller. So much so that I jumped right into the sequel, The Bourne Supremacy. Ironically, the entire Bourne movie trilogy is solely based on this first book, not the other two.

I read this a very, very long time ago when I was in high school I think. I decided it needed to be revisited and this time I chose the audiobook. It is very understandable why they made this into a movie but I am glad it’s been a long time since I have seen the movie as well because I have a feeling it was disappointing in comparison. Not that the movie was bad, but the book was just so much more. If you really put yourself in this man’s shoes and think of all he went through and how damaged his mind was it is truly amazing. And the love of a woman is probably the only reason he survived. Great book! Lots of action and confusion and misdirection but the ending was fantastic.

I'll start by mentioning that I really liked the movie (which only follows the premise of the book and little more). It was a clever, fun action movie. So when I say that this book was three times better than the movie, you'll know that I'm not disparaging the movie, but elevating this book.

Ludlum covered his bases: Great characters, fantastic premise, enthralling plot, and really top-notch writing. Bourne's inner conflicts are pronounced, and his struggles are anything but superficial. Of course this has action/killing, but this is not a dumb Clancy novel.

I was also pleased to see how important Marie is in this tale (again, nothing like the movie). She's extremely intelligent, educated, and intuitive.

I can't recommend this book enough, even if this isn't your normal genre.

I had reason to read this again after a loooong time, not really remembering much about it.

First, forget the movie. The only things the book and movie have in common are the title and the names of the main characters. This can be both good and bad. The good part is that you don’t know what’s going to happen based on Matt Damon’s adventures; the bad part is that it’s not nearly as much fun.

This is about as close as Ludlum gets to a semi-realistic espionage thriller. He’ll never be mentioned in the same breath as LeCarre and Silva as someone who “gets it right,” and his taste for subterranean conspiracy and ultra-secret global cabals is what put me off him to begin with. Still, here he manages to rein himself in. Bourne himself is more sympathetic than most literary killing machines (his body count is far lower than Matt’s), and even though his flashbacks happen in the most conveniently inconvenient times, you still get a good feeling for the angst he suffers from not knowing which of several competing histories is his. The twists and turns aren’t always predictable (this is a good thing), and Ludlum is quite capable of vividly setting and managing a stage.

Two aspects of this novel proved problematic for me. First is the heroine, Marie. She's presented as a smart, educated woman with a responsible grown-up government job…who falls deeply (almost irrationally) in love with Bourne after less than eight days together, during nearly two of which she’s his hostage(!). Really? When you spend 4/5 of a novel asking “Why is she doing that?” and the only answer is “She’s in lurve,” you know there’s a problem.

Second is the antagonist. When Ludlum wrote The Bourne Identity, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez – aka Carlos – was the hot flavor-of-the-week for global terrorism and not a great deal was known about him. So Ludlum makes him the invincible terrorist genius-mastermind who has suborned officials both high and low on every continent except Antarctica, has limitless resources and eyes on every street corner (that global cabal Ludlum was so fond of). It probably worked in 1975. Now, however, we know what a thug and clown Carlos was, that he botched many of his operations, and that he spent a lot of time scraping for money from one sponsor or another. As such, it’s mostly impossible to take seriously his portrayal in this novel. We can still read and believe a period piece like LeCarre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy because we know the Soviet security services truly were formidable adversaries. Bourne, already saddled with some big credibility problems, struggles mightily to survive this sucking chest wound.

Having re-read The Bourne Identity, I have no interest in going further in the series. It’s very much a product of its time and should be read as such. I remain convinced that Ludlum’s most entertaining book was n  The Road to Gandolfon, in which he mercilessly lampooned himself to great effect.

4 Stars for The Bourne Identity: Bourne Series , Book 1 (audiobook) by Robert Ludlum read by Scott Brick.
I think this would be a 5 star book for me if I hadn’t seen the movie. Especially if I had read it in the 80’s. I really enjoyed the beginning of the story but then it seemed to get bogged down. I’m expecting the pacing of the movie and Jason Bourne just isn’t fighting bad guys enough. It’s hard to not compare it to the story that I know so much better.