"Robert Ludlum," wrote Colin Harrison in the New York Times Magazine, "whose novels have sold 290 million copies (more or less the population of the United States), knew what makes a successful thriller. And that, above all, is velocity." Pages do not...

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...

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...

One of the most commercially successful authors of the twentieth century, Robert Ludlum is arguably the most widely read writer of the espionage thriller genre. He is the author of nineteen bestselling novels, and his books have sold more than 200...

Robert Ludlum (May 25, 1927 New York City – March 12, 2001 Naples, Florida) was an American author of 21 thriller novels. There are more than 210 million copies of his books in print, and they have been translated into 32 languages. Ludlum also...

THOUGH BY no means the originator of the big blockbuster thriller (of such physical dimensions that, even in paperback, it can stop a door), the American writer Robert Ludlum may fairly be considered a progenitor. He instituted not only a type of suspense...

David Gibson, Record Staff Writer The Record (Bergen County, NJ) 01-18-1992 LIFE IMITATES ROBERT LUDLUM -- WAYNE MAN'S KIN IN RUSSIAN ORDEAL By David Gibson, Record Staff Writer Date: 01-18-1992, Saturday Section: NEWS Edition: All Editions -- Two Star B, Two Star P,...

Matt Damon's amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne shares initials with another notorious screen operative. But other than that, Damon doesn't see any similarities between Bourne and James Bond.Bond is "an imperialist and he's a misogynist. He kills people and laughs and sips martinis and wisecracks about...

“Honestly, I’m having a panic attack,” said Bourne Ultimatum co-star Julia Stiles, 26, wearing sleeveless, shiny purple after the movie’s East Hampton premiere, which was organized by publicist Peggy Siegal on Sunday, July 29. Matt Damon (not present) may be through with being Bourne, but...

Robert Ludlum writes spy thrillers the way the rest of us play Scrabble. Ludlum has 25 tiles, with words on each—words like World War II, secret documents, Nazi war treasure, CIA, Vatican, Rio/Buenos Aires, Geneva/Zurich, Berlin, MI-5, Maserati, beautiful blonde, Gestapo, double agent, international banker, false passport. Each year Ludlum chooses half the tiles, face down, and turns them over, arranging them this way and that until some reasonably plausible sequence appears. He then plays them on a ...

["The Rhinemann Exchange" is an] espionage thriller set in the desperate last year of the Hitler war. The situation that ignites the action (nearly five hundred sanguineous pages of it) is preposterous but intellectually undemanding. Germany has perfected a gyroscopic airplane-guidance system but lacks the industrial diamonds needed to complete its terrible rocket missile; the United States has access to tons of industrial diamonds but its aerophysicists can't get the kinks out of its t...

What is the Scarlatti inheritance [in Ludlum's book of the same name]? Well, if you must know, you'll have to find your way through petrified forests of flashbacks to a Swiss hotel on the German border. Here, in a suite of exclamation points, we come finally face to face with Ulster Stewart Scarlett, turncoat, Nazi, gangster, international rotter, as he prepares to turn over his cached hoard to his heir. ("They contain millions! Millions! But there are certain conditions … you wi...