I liked BookBourne just fine. He's not as hot as MovieBourne, but he was more complicated and had the decency to fall for a woman who had some use to the plot beyond her death.
She was in banking, IIRC.
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I liked BookBourne just fine. He's not as hot as MovieBourne, but he was more complicated and had the decency to fall for a woman who had some use to the plot beyond her death.
She was in banking, IIRC.
The fact that book-Marie was in banking is the reason why there is a 100-page digression about how to transfer money illegally across national borders before the advent of the internet. Let us merely say that Ludlum had a pretty good idea for the first Bourne novel (the other two struck me as faintly ridiculous) and went about it in methods that don't fly very well for people who aren't already fans of angsty spy novels.
I was raised on angsty spy novels. Well, them and stories of racial violence in the deep south. So I had no learning/loving curve at all.
I mean, there are people that don't like angsty spy novels? And pick up Ludlum?
Harrumph.
I wiki'd, and apparently she's a Canadian economist. Which would explain why we're all right. I remember her being at a conference.
I've had a bad day at work, this is why I'm trainspotting here.
She was in banking, IIRC.
She felt to me like total flobotanum -- Bourne's shadowy past could be sussed out if he only had the assistance of someone who knows international banking inside and out, if only -- why, hel-LO, Marie!
It may also be that I'm ruined for spy novels by having started out with Le Carré, lord and king and master and commander of the angsty spy novel (TM Nutty), and I probably shouldn't have read Bourne quite so immediately after The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, as it was bound to suffer in comparison. I should have waited a bit, say, two or three years. t /serious Ludlum issues
Ludlum's more pulpy. There are many people in Le Carré's league. Graham Greene, perhaps?
Graham Greene is so infinitely better than Ludlum. Though he doesn't really inhabit the "spy novel" portion of my bookbrain.
Though he doesn't really inhabit the "spy novel" portion of my bookbrain.
I got to him through Our Man in Havana, so he does for me. Ludlum is more in a class with Fleming, though I think I like Fleming better.
I liked Frederick Forsyth's "The Fourth Protocol", which was made into a so-so movie with Pierce Brosnan.
Fleming at least is brief. OTOH, Ludlum's personal angst is a little bit camouflaged by the fact he is so lengthy.
I liked Ludlum; he got me through highschool; but as with a lot of my highschool reading I can't bear to read it now I'm no longer in highschool.