The BOURNE ENIGMA
Eric Van Lustbader
Synopsis
On the eve of Russian General Boris Karpov’s wedding, Jason Bourne receives an enigmatic message from his old friend and fellow spymaster. In Moscow, what should be a joyous occasion turns bloody and lethal. Now, Bourne is the only one who can decipher Karpov’s cryptogram. He discovers that Karpov was willing to betray his Sovereign to warn Bourne of a crippling disaster about to be visited by the world. Bourne has only four days to discover the nature of the disaster and stop it.
The trail Karpov has been following leads Bourne to Cairo and the doorstep of Ivan Borz, the elusive international arms dealer infamous for hiding behind a never-ending series of false identities, a man Bourne has been hunting ever since he abducted former Treadstone director Soraya Moore and her two-year-old daughter and brutally murdered her husband.
In war-torn Syria and then Cyprus, Bourne moves ever closer to discovering the astonishing truth and ever closer to his own death.
The clock is ticking, and Bourne has less than four days to solve Karpov’s riddle—and hunt down Borz—if he hopes to prevent a cataclysmic international war…
Richard says
This is not a book for the faint-hearted: many characters with foreign names, even foreign words that need research, and geographic locations that are seldom heard of…in short, pay attention.
If you are a Jason Bourne fan, and many of us are because of exposure to cinema, then the book will appeal to you. However, it is no light slog through pages of easy reading. There are so many foreign names and foreign places that one will be hard-pressed not to be distracted spending time on Google.
Jason Bourne is the James Bond of today, well, ok, yesterday, while Bond is the day before. The book is a solid read though I found it demanded effort from the reader to stay focused recalling what was read just a page or two before.
I couldn’t describe the plot if I tried…it might be something about funding a Ukrainian invasion by Middle Eastern terrorists. I am not certain.
The writing is professional, though often I would say it is too esoteric, cerebral, and intellectual than necessary. If the author, Van Lustbader, is trying to score on the esoteric level, he wins, but if he is trying to write an entertaining, engaging and suspenseful book on espionage and terrorist activities, he gets few points.
The book demands concentration, memory and recall, making it a demanding read.
