"The Bourne Identity"

I thought I would wait to post on this book until we had our Book Club discussion last night. We were pretty much agreed. All of us who had read this book before (it was first published in 1980) remembered it as a gripping thriller. I've read it three times; first in 1986, then about 10 years later, and now last week. I would have to say that this book has definitely lost some of its lustre. Robert Ludlum didn't pioneer the spy genre, but he certainly brought it to new heights in early '80s. His books were exciting and different; I had never read anything like them before.

Recently, authors have raised the bar on spy thrillers with books like "The DaVinci Code" and authors like Tom Clancy, Vince Flynn, and David Baldacci--the action never stops. I had some trouble getting through "The Bourne Identity" because it moved so slowly. It was easy to get lost in the middle of the plot because it seemed to go in circles without progressing.

Some of the good things about the book were that I still cared about the characters, and wanted to know what would happen to them. The plot still worked and was only slightly affected by dealing with the old-fashioned technology. (It was funny to read about these high-level spies and assassins all needing to use pay phones!) I appreciated the toned-down sex and violence that are so graphic in modern books.

I enjoyed revisiting this spy classic, but I mourned the fact that it did not live up to my memory.