Rating: 
Summary: Poor Ludlum
Review: Robert Ludlum was a good thriller writer. This book has a good opening, a series of stops and starts where you keep guessing when the plot will begin, finds its legs, then runs out of steam and dissolves into little more than a hatchet job on J. Edgar Hoover. If you think Hoover was the vilest man in the twentieth Century and Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Castro and Ho Chi Minh stand in his shadow, you'll like this book. Hoover's a popular person to hate nowadays. If Ludlum had been more of an artist, he might've used the opportunity to tell Hoover's story as a tragedy -- an idealistic young man who loves his country takes over an extremely troubled bureau and singlehandedly fashions it into an efficient organization that tracks down and puts behind bars one infamous character after another; but rather than leave when it was his time, he overstayed his welcome and no one wanted to remove him, until his tragic flaws make him hated and feared more than respected. But Ludlum has no time for that stuff. If he stuck to his plot, he might still have gotten away with it. But he preferred to admire his own facility at character assassination at the expense of what promised to be a ripping book. It makes you wish you'd never strayed from Tom Clancy. Stick to Ludlum's Jason Bourne books. They're snappier and more mature. This book, as a cartoon character once said, "Makes like a Hoover."
Rating:
Summary: Just about unfinishable bore
Review: The Bourne Identity by this author was great but this is a contrived, monumental bore. Intricate plotting is only worth following if the themes and characters are worthy of attention. This book is some kind of desperately single-minded, looney-left hate fest. OK, you can say Hoover was a monster, and say it again 10 times, maybe even 50 or 60 times, but that does not a book make. The world presented here is sick, but the sickness is the author's monomania.
Rating:
Summary: Just about unfinishable bore
Review: The Bourne Identity by this author was great but this is a contrived, monumental bore. Intricate plotting is only worth following if the themes and characters are worthy of attention. This book is some kind of desperately single-minded, looney-left hate fest. OK, you can say Hoover was a monster, and say it again 10 times, maybe even 50 or 60 times, but that does not a book make. The world presented here is sick, but the sickness is the author's monomania.
Rating: 
Summary: Impossible to stop reading
Review: This is my sixth Ludlum book, and I can't say which I prefer. I confirm my statement, this is the one that got my hands stick like with crazy glue to the book. Incredible how the writer sets all the places and persons, taking you step by step deeper into the novel. Don't miss this one, you will regret it if you do not get your hands in this novel. Ludlum is the best.
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