Now This is Deception Indeed, Prometheus
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Author: Robert Ludlum
Title: The Prometheus Deception Genre: thriller Robert Ludlum used to write tense, tightly-plotted thrillers. Sure, he's always had problems developing female characters and his dialogue has never been that good, but at least the plots used to be interesting. That stopped about six or eight books ago. There was a period in the early 1980s when I, like the rest of the English-speaking world, devoured Robert Ludlum novels - The Holcroft Covenant, The Gemini Contenders, The Matarese Circle, The Ostermann Weekend, - they all flowed off Ludlum's pen with a certain beauty and logical symmetry. Not only had he mastered the title style (definite object + proper noun used as adjective + noun), he'd mastered the genre as well. And then came The Parsifal Mosaic. Rarely has so muddled a book by such a well-accepted author made it into print. Were I to rate that particular novel, I'd have to assign it zero stars! Not only was the plotting muddy and twisted, it was tangled beyond recognition by Ludlum's desire to bring his villains up to date (the fact that Hitler is really, truly dead has been tough on some of the authors in this genre). Plus, it's with that novel that Ludlum introduced a most irritating habit, that of italicizing words almost at random. Presumably, it's for emphasis, but if he'd written the dialogue right in the first place, he wouldn't need the italics! To the case at hand: The Prometheus Deception is an attempt to update his villains yet again -- this time we have a shadowy Big Brother surreptitiously watching over all of us, tracking our every move, using all the accumulated knowledge of the world's databases and credit bureaus to keep tabs on our daily lives. Kinda makes you a bit paranoid, doesn't it? Big Brother could -- supposedly -- track your visits to your shrink, your liquor purchases, your assignations in cheap hotels -- just by looking at your credit report... Seems to me they might need to tap into your bank account and your credit card provider, among others, but that's a quibble. Ludlum's latest hero, Nicholas Bryson, is (as always) a right-thinking American who is willing to kill, maim, torture, lie, cheat, and steal for his country. Not unlike the current crop of presidential candidates, eh? He's been drummed out of the service and into a teaching position at a liberal arts college somewhere, when he gets lured back into the biz. What the heck, why not -- it gives him a chance to look for the wife who mysteriously disappeared six or seven years ago. And he gets to play with all his old buddies from the Directorate; a supersecret spy agency that works outside the boundaries of the CIA and other intelligence agencies that are, as we all know, riddled with moles. Along the way Nicky-Nick gets shot about six times and beat up with an amazing regularity (every second chapter, I think). But never fear for his safety - he's visited by the "deus ex machina" express about two hundred times. And he keeps talking in italics whenever he gets excited. When he finds the missing wife (no spoiler there, we all knew it would happen), they whisper inane nothings to each other before they excise the pent-up sexual tension of their long separation. Why, oh why, does Ludlum think lovers call each other "darling" in the throes of passion? Is he writing a 1930s movie script? Of course, in keeping with the Ludlum style, the bad guys aren't really wiped out. Somewhere a little seed stock remains; otherwise Bourne -- err, Bryson -- couldn't be pulled out of retirement on that deserted Carribean island of his for a later novel. Wonder if it's the same island all Ludlum's other retired spies live on? I hope not -- it would get kind of nervous around there with all those paranoids with itchy trigger fingers. This one's definitely not a keeper. Ludlum's plotting and character development continue to decline, and he needs a strong editor now more than ever. The labyrinthine plot suffers from the numerous double-, triple-, and quadruple-crosses that abound. I think there might even be a quintuple-cross in there somewhere... There's far too much emphasis on paranoia and far too little emphasis on reason and logic; too much blood and not enough intelligence; too many characters who aren't what they appear to appear to appear to be. And too darn many italics! Would it be too much to ask to get Ludlum's old Bantam editor back? Please? Maybe he/she could have gotten this one pared down to a manageable level. all content copyright © 2014 by scmrak
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