Robert Ludlum

Robert Ludlum (born 1927) is a prolific author of best-selling spy and thriller novels noted for their complicated plots and high-powered suspense. The diverse settings and time periods are embellished by his protagonists, who are ordinary people either accidentally propelled or manipulated into participating in acts of espionage and political machination.

While some critics find Ludlum's plots formulaic and his prose overwritten, others commend his ability to create plausible situations, evoke foreign milieus, and sustain reader interest.

The Scarlatti Inheritance (1971), The Rhinemann Exchange (1974), and The Holcroft Covenant (1978) are all set in the World War II era and depict the attempts of the Third Reich to gain world dominance. The Scarlatti Inheritance, which takes place during the early years of World War II, details the financial backing of the fledgling Nazi party by a group of Western business executives whose leader is an American expatriate and Nazi sympathizer. A corrupt military-industrialist faction is central to The Rhinemann Exchange, a tale of international double-dealing during the last year of World War II. The Holcroft Covenant, set in present-day Europe, revolves around the fruition of a scheme devised forty years earlier by German army leaders, who secretly bankrolled a large sum of money to be used by their descendants in reestablishing the Third Reich.

In several of his works, Ludlum unfolds speculative accounts of conspiracy in various facets of American society. In The Osterman Weekend (1972), the CIA enlists the aid of a television reporter to dissolve a conspiracy aimed at economic insurgency in which several of his close friends may be involved. The Matlock Paper (1973) centers on the criminal activities of a group of New England college professors and the reluctance of the school's dean to assist a government bureau in exposing the teachers. In The Chancellor Manuscript (1977), Ludlum alters history in his story of the assassination of J. Edgar Hoover by a group of government officials who seek control of his private files.

International terrorism is a prominent feature in many of Ludlum's novels. In The Matarese Circle (1979), several multinational corporations attempt to undermine governmental restrictions and regulations by using the services of a terrorist group. The Bourne Identity (1980) centers on a Vietnam veteran named David Webb, alias Jason Bourne, who is maneuvered by American intelligence officials into becoming a counter-assassin in an effort to eliminate a notorious terrorist. In The Aquitaine Progression (1983), military leaders from several powerful nations conspire to destabilize and usurp their respective governments. The Bourne Supremacy (1986), a sequel to The Bourne Identity, revolves around a plot to destroy the People's Republic of China with the aid of a terrorist who masquerades as Jason Bourne.

Ludlum has also written novels under pseudonyms: Trevayne (1973) and The Cry of the Halidan (1974) as Jonathan Ryder, and The Road to Gandolfo (1975) as Michael Shepherd. The Osterman Weekend and The Holcroft Covenant have been adapted for film.

Suspense novelist Robert Ludlum "has his share of unkind critics who complain of implausible plots, leaden prose, and, as a caustic reviewer once sneered, an absence of `redeeming literary values to balance the vulgar sensationalism,'" Susan Baxter and Mark Nichols noted in Maclean's. "But harsh critical words have not prevented Robert Ludlum ... from becoming one of the most widely read and wealthiest authors in the world." In fact, with sales of his books averaging 5.5 million copies each, Ludlum is "one of the most popular living authors [writing] in the English language," Baxter and Nichols concluded.

Authorship came as a second career for Ludlum, who worked in the theater and found success as a producer before writing his first novel at age forty-two. His most notable production, Bill Manhoff's The Owl and the Pussycat, featured then unknown actor Alan Alda, who later gained fame for his role in the television series, M*A*S*H. The play was performed at Playhouse-on-the-Mall in Paramus, New Jersey, the country's first theater in a shopping center, which Ludlum opened in 1960. After serving as producer at the Playhouse for ten years, Ludlum found himself bored and frustrated with the pressures of theater work. Finally, he gave in to his wife's admonition to try his hand at writing.

The Scarlatti Inheritance, Ludlum's first novel, was written around an old story idea and outline, drafted years earlier and finally fleshed out when he left the theater. Based on Ludlum's curiosity at the wealth of one group of Germans during that country's economic collapse and skyrocketing inflation following World War I, The Scarlatti Inheritance follows several financiers, including some Americans, who fund Hitler's Third Reich. The book set the pattern for Ludlum's career: the story of espionage and corruption became a best-seller. Criticism of The Scarlatti Inheritance also foreshadowed that of future works. The book was described by Patricia L. Skarda in Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook: 1982 as having a "somewhat erratic pace and occasionally melodramatic characterizations" but was nonetheless "a thrilling, compelling tale"--pronouncements typical of each of Ludlum's novels.

In his next work, The Osterman Weekend, a television reporter is convinced by the CIA that his friends are involved in a conspiracy to control the world economy and agrees to gather evidence against them, but finds himself in over his head when his wife and children are threatened. Though the book's ending is considered disappointing by several reviewers, William B. Hill, writing in Best Sellers, noted, "If the ending is a bit weak, it is chiefly because it lets the rider down off a very high horse." Skarda pointed out that the story "exposes the inadequacies of American intelligence operations and our deepest fears that our friends cannot be trusted." Government agents again use a civilian as an investigator in a situation beyond his expertise in The Matlock Paper. Professor Matlock is pushed "into an untenable and dangerous situation" while snooping around campus for information on a group of crime bosses, Kelly J. Fitzpatrick related in Best Sellers. "The climax is effective and leaves the reader wondering, `Can it be so?'" Yet Newgate Callendar countered in the New York Times Book Review, "The basic situation is unreal--indeed, it's unbelievable--but a good writer can make the reader suspend his disbelief, and Ludlum is a good writer."

Trevayne and The Cry of the Halidon, both written under the pseudonym Jonathan Ryder, feature protagonists who discover they were hired not for their skills, but in hopes that they would be unable to uncover the truth about their employers. Andrew Trevayne, appointed to investigate spending by the U.S. Defense Department, uncovers a company so powerful that even the president of the United States is controlled by it. "There is no doubt that big business exerts an inordinate amount of pressure," Callendar contended in a New York Times Book Review. "But how much pressure? Who is really running the country?" Reviewing The Cry of the Halidon, in which a young geologist is sent to Jamaica to conduct an industrial survey and winds up in the crossfire of British Intelligence, the corporation that hired him, and various underground factions, Callendar disparaged Ludlum's "rather crude and obvious writing style," and commented, "[Ludlum] is not very good at suggesting real characters, and his hero is a cutout composite of a number of sources." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly found that, early on in The Cry of the Halidon, "cleverness ceases to look like a virtue and becomes an irritant. If the writing were as rich or subtle as the plot is involved the reader might more happily stay the course ..., but the writing is in fact rather bare." Ludlum's final pseudonymous offering (this time writing as Michael Shepherd), The Road to Gandolfo is "a strange, lurching amalgam of thriller and fantasy," Henri C. Veit contended in Library Journal. Involving the Pope, the Mafia, and the U.S. Army, the book is intended to be funny, but falls short, Veit continued. A Publishers Weekly reviewer similarly noted that the book "comes crammed with zaniness and playful characters, but, unhappily, neither asset produces comedy or the black humor indictment of the military mind the author intended."

The Rhinemann Exchange contains "one extremely ingenious plot gimmick," according to Callendar in New York Times Book Review, in which the United States and Germany arrange a trade--industrial diamonds for Germany, a weapons guidance system for the United States. Despite the author's "commonplace and vulgar style apparently much relished by his vast audience," Veit predicted in a Library Journal review that the book would be a success. In a review of the audio version of The Rhinemann Exchange, a Publishers Weekly contributor believed Ludlum fans "will find exactly what they're looking for--in a format already quite familiar." A secret with devastating consequences, described by Irma Pascal Heldman in New York Times Book Review as "absolutely within the realms of authenticity and fascinating to contemplate," is the key to The Gemini Contenders. Twin brothers, compelled by their father's deathbed wish to find a hidden vault containing a volatile document, unleash the secret on the world. Despite criticizing the plot, characters, and period detail of The Gemini Contenders, reviewer T. J. Binyon commented in the Times Literary Supplement that Ludlum "has the ability to tell a story in such a way as to keep even the fastidious reader unwillingly absorbed."

In The Chancellor Manuscript Ludlum returned to remaking history as he had in The Scarlatti Inheritance. J. Edgar Hoover's death is found to be an assassination, not the result of natural causes as was previously believed. The murder was carried out to prevent Hoover from releasing his secret files, which, Christian Science Monitor's Barbara Phillips noted, "contain enough damaging information to ruin the lives of every man, woman and child in the nation." A group of prominent citizens join forces to retrieve the files but find half have already been stolen. An unsuspecting decoy is deployed, as in many other Ludlum stories, to lead the group to the thieves. The message of The Chancellor Manuscript is familiar to Ludlum fans, as the book "seems to justify our worst nightmares of what really goes on in the so-called Intelligence Community in Washington," Richard Freedman maintained in the New York Times Book Review.

The Bourne Identity, which introduced a trilogy of books, follows Bourne, a spy who awakens in a doctor's office with amnesia; the story is played out as a remarkable number of killers and organizations attempt to finish Bourne off before he realizes his true identity. "Some of Mr. Ludlum's previous novels were so convoluted they should have been packaged with bags of bread crumbs to help readers keep track of the plot lines," Peter Andrews mused in the New York Times Book Review. "But The Bourne Identity is a Ludlum story at its most severely plotted, and for me its most effective." The second volume, The Bourne Supremacy, forces Bourne to face his past when his wife is kidnapped. The final story in the "Bourne" trilogy, The Bourne Ultimatum, finds Bourne drawn into one last battle with his arch-enemy, the Jackal. The Los Angeles Times Book Review's Don G. Campbell praised the third "Bourne" book as an example of "how it should be done," concluding that "in the pulse-tingling style that began so many years ago with The Scarlatti Inheritance, we are caught up irretrievably."

A woman comes back from the dead and a spy in the White House threatens humanity's continued existence in The Parsifal Mosaic. "Certainly, millions of entranced readers tap their feet in time to his fiction, and I'm positive this new adventure will send his legions of fans dancing out into the streets," Evan Hunter remarked in the New York Times Book Review. "Me? I must be tone-deaf." A world takeover is again imminent in The Aquitaine Progression, this time at the hands of five military figures. "Ludlum's hero, Joel Converse, learns of a plot by generals in the United States, Germany, France, Israel and South Africa to spawn violent demonstrations. Once the violence bursts out of hand, the generals plan to step in and take over," Charles P. Wallace wrote in the Los Angeles Times Book Review.The Icarus Agenda features a similar plot. This time, five wealthy, powerful figures arrange the election of the next United States president. "There is a sufficient amount of energy and suspense present in The Icarus Agenda to remind the reader why Mr. Ludlum's novels are best sellers," Julie Johnson commented in the New York Times Book Review. "Ludlum is light-years beyond his literary competition in piling plot twist upon plot twist," Peter L. Robertson commented in the Chicago Tribune Books, "until the mesmerized reader is held captive, willing to accept any wayward, if occasionally implausible, plotting device." In a more recent offering, The Road to Omaha, Ludlum departs from the seriousness of his espionage thrillers with a follow-up to The Road to Gandolfo that continues that novel's farcical tone. The Hawk and Sam, Ludlum's heroes in Gandolfo, return to fight the government for a plot of land legally belonging to an Indian tribe. In a review of the audio version of The Road to Omaha, a Publishers Weekly reviewer noted, "Hardcore Ludlum fans may be taken aback at first, but they stand to be won over in the listening." Nealy 20 years later, in 1998, Ludlum followed up The Matarese Circle with The Matarese Countdown.

The key elements of Ludlum's books--corruption in high places, elaborate secret plans, and unsuspecting civilians drawn into the fray--are what keep Ludlum fans waiting for his next offering. His writing, characterized by the liberal use of exclamation points, italics, sentence fragments, and rhetorical questions, has been described by some critics as crude, but others acknowledge that the style is popular with millions of readers and has proven difficult to duplicate, leaving Ludlum with little copycat competition. Still, reviewers often point to Ludlum's use of mixed metaphors and illogical statements as serious flaws in his books. Horror novelist Stephen King, in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek review of The Parsifal Mosaic for the Washington Post Book World, highlighted some of Ludlum's "strange, wonderful, and almost Zen-like thoughts: `We've got ... a confluence of beneficial prerogatives.' `What I know is still very operative.' `I'll get you your cover. But not two men. I think a couple would be better.'"

Journalist Bob Woodward, writing in the Washington Post Book World, summarized the media's view of Ludlum in a review of The Icarus Agenda: "Ludlum justifiably has a loyal following. Reviews of most of his previous books are critical but conclude, grudgingly, that he has another inevitable bestseller." In a review of The Bourne Identity for Washington Post Book World, Richard Harwood opined, "Whether reviewers are universally savage or effusive seems irrelevant: the book is bound to be a best seller. The Bourne Identity ... is already on both the national and Washington Post best-seller lists and the damned thing won't officially be published [for three more days]. So much for the power of the press." Despite reviewers' advice, readers have voiced their approval of Ludlum in sales figures. As Baxter and Nichols noted in Maclean's, "For all his imperfections, Ludlum manages--by pumping suspense into every twist and turn in his tangled plots and by demanding sympathy for well-meaning protagonists afflicted by outrageous adversity--to keep millions of readers frantically turning his pages."

In November of 1998, Ludlum signed a contract with St. Martin's Press, making the company his only publisher in North America.

Associated Events

Historical Context

• The Life and Times of Robert Ludlum (1927-)
• At the time of Ludlum's birth:
• Calvin Coolidge was President of the United States
• Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences founded
• Holland Tunnel opened in New York City
• The times:
• 1930-1960: Modernist Period of American Literature
• 1936-1939: Spanish Civil War
• 1939-1945: World War II
• 1940s-1950s: Abstract Expressionism
• 1950-1953: Korean War
• mid 1950s-1970s: Pop Art
• 1960-present: Postmodernist Period of American literature
• 1957-1975: Vietnam War
• 1970-present: Postmodernism
• 1991: Persian Gulf War
• 1992-1996: Civil war in Bosnia
• Ludlum's contemporaries:
• Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) British movie director
• Evelyn Waugh (1903-1946) British writer
• William Golding (1911-1993) American writer
• William Gibson (1914-) American science fiction writer
• Orson Welles (1915-1985) American actor and director
• Anthony Burgess (1917-) British writer
• Joseph Heller (1923-) American writer
• Gordie Howe (1928-) Canadian hockey player
• Edward Albee (1928-) American writer and playwright
• Woody Allen (1935-) American actor, comedian, screenwriter, filmmaker
• Selected world events:
• 1940: Royal Air Force began night bombing of German cities
• 1945: Vietnamese independence declared by Ho Chi Minh
• 1952: Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot published
• 1961: East Germany built the Berlin Wall
• 1969: Woodstock Music and Art Festival held in upstate New York
• 1975: Saigon fell to North Vietnamese forces
• 1980: Polish workers formed Solidarity labor union
• 1984: Britain agreed to cede Hong Kong to China in 1997
• 1987: Gorbachev announced perestroika; considered the end of the Cold War
• 1990: West Germany and East Germany were reunited

Further Reading

• Bestsellers 89, Issue 1, Gale, 1989.
• Bestsellers 90, Issue 3, Gale, 1990.
• Christian Science Monitor, March 31, 1977, p. 31.
• Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale, Volume 22, 1982, Volume 43, 1988.
• Library Journal, October 1, 1974, p. 2504; April 1, 1975, pp. 694-695.
• Los Angeles Times, March 1, 1997, p. F17.
• Los Angeles Times Book Review, March 11, 1984, p. 3; March 23, 1986, p. 3; March 18, 1990, p. 8.