Robert Ludlum: The Prometheus deception

Orion

$34.95

Reviewed by Gilbert Wong

With a few days of summer R&R in prospect, I packed this book. I'm not sure why. Nor could I recall the last Ludlum I read, largely because the titles tend to merge. Was it The Bourne Ultimatum or The Holcroft Covenant?

After 21 novels the titles blur, and I was about 15 at the time. I was curious to see if the thrills and spills of adolescent nostalgia might return. No such luck. Because it turns out that Ludlum continues to write for the 15-year-old in all men, no matter their age, fuelling the testosterone fantasies of great sex and hip violence that pre-occupy the teen imagination. As spy tales go, the premise belongs more to James Bond than George Smiley.

Nick Bryson is the top man in a super secret agency called The Directorate, supposedly the black ops part of the American intelligence community. They operate with impunity because officially they don't exist

An undercover operation goes very bad and Bryson is compulsorily retired to academia. Five years later his peaceful existence is disturbed. He finds that he was really working for the Kremlin, in what seems an audacious sting. The plot has been called ingenious. A better adjective would be unbelievable.