The Prometheus Deception (original 2000; edition 2000)

This book had a good beginning, bad ending. The whole premise of the book is about secret spy organizations and their machinations. It's cool to see the main character struggle to find out the truth, and as a reader you're just waiting to find out what really is going on.

But about 2/3 into the book big plot points are revealed and then it just goes downhill from there. At this point Ludlum just turns off the credibility factor and turns up the wonkiness. Things that don't make logical sense just keep occurring and characters that have nothing to do with the main plot appear. Even weirder, the baddies keep doing things to the main character that there doesn't seem to be any motivation for. But they do them anyway. Weird. I think Ludlum was trying to go for a cool, wow factor, but it fell flat.

I've read a few Ludlum books right now, and I think his earlier books must be his best because his later books just don't seem that good. ( )

NIL

American intelligence operative Nicholas Bryson is forced into a new identity; then his cover is blown. ( )

pretty good, though old tricks

Well I don’t know about lost, stolen maybe, exploited more like. The whole plot is based on the control of personal, governmental and corporate information. For years a secret consortium has been plotting to take over the private stewardship of all information. They are called the Prometheus Group. The Directive, the agency Bryson was connected with was supposed to expose them.

The P Group is made up of world leaders and corporate leaders and their plan is finally coming together only Bryson is in their face. They try to eliminate him but of course, they fail. So they all meet at the head man’s estate in Washington. Bryson and his wife break into the place and Bryson sets off an Electro Magnetic Pulse that completely disables all electronics within the compound, including the smart guns all the bad guys have. Only he has a gun that will work. At the same time, he starts a fire. Because the electronics of the super house (so eerily like Bill Gates’s life, it’s scary) are ruined, the conspirators are locked in and they almost all die.

Of course a few escape and turn up just at the end of the novel. The end was stupid. He and the wife are retired to some tropical island and are expecting a baby (gak!). Bryson sees a tiny article in the newspaper and remarks to the wife that it may all be starting up again. Then suddenly the tv comes on and it’s one of the old Prometheus/Directive guys and he’s been monitoring the couple all along. Despite the information that Bryson has lodged with a dozen people around the world, this guy is going to try it all over again.

The Ultimate Spy:-
After fifteen years as a brilliant master spy, Nick Bryson has disappeared into anonymity as a professor at an exclusive college in western Pennsylvania - until he's suddenly lured back into the game.
The Ultimate Threat:-
Recruited by the CIA, he's been commissioned to track the moves of the Directorate. Once, the ultra-secret intelligence agency was Bryson's training ground. Now it's a multinational terrorist conspiracy bent on global domination.
The Ultimate Deception:-
But to eliminate the core of corruption means plunging into his own past, investiagating the motives of a beautiful stranger who may be his greatest downfall, and infiltrating a secret nexus of power called Prometheus that holds the terrifying clues to his past - and the even more terrifying possibilities of the future....

From Publishers Weekly
Ludlum goes full throttle in this frantically paced, if somewhat hollow, tale of one man's efforts to thwart the forces of world domination. That man is Nick Bryson, a retired operative for the Directorate, the most secretive of the world's many private intelligence agencies. Now working in the peaceful halls of academe, Bryson is stunned when the CIA informs him that the Directorate, to which he pledged his loyalty for nearly 20 years, was actually a Russian front. Worse yet, the organization seems to be stockpiling weapons for a secret assault on the West. When Bryson agrees to help the CIA bring down the Directorate, he's hurled into a series of hair-raising episodes that take him from one world capital to another. With assassins snapping at his heels, Bryson watches in horror as tragedy follows him wherever he goesAan anthrax outbreak in Vienna, a passenger train blown up outside Paris, a jetliner falling from the sky over New York City. Could these terrorist attacks be the work of the Directorate, Bryson wonders, or should they be attributed to the Prometheans, another shadowy intelligence outfit that seems to be the force behind a new international surveillance agency? Catapulting from one action sequence to the next and culminating in a spectacular finale in Seattle, the story is an exciting showcase for all the latest spy gadgetry, but it has little of the contemplative quality and social context of Ludlum's finer efforts. Ludlum's cautionary themeAthat technology will soon allow for surveillance on a scale that grossly infringes on personal privacyAgets lost in the barrage of flying bullets and explosions. Bryson himself is a dynamo and lots of fun to watch in action, but his almost superhuman endurance and intelligence seem more suited to that other heroic gentleman of adventure, Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt, than to a Ludlum hero. Major ad/promo. (Oct.)

This spy novel started out good. A master spy is put out to pasture by his organization, only to discover later that the group he worked for wasn't what he thought it was and he had been working for the wrong side all the time. He then tries to get back in to discover what is going on. The chase lasts the rest of the book with improbably twist after improbably twist. I lost count of how many people he killed and how many times he escapes certain death. He heals amazingly quickly from knife wounds, gunshots and every other thing that comes his way. Somehow he can fight off five people at once and kill them all without too serious of wounds himself. It seems everyone in the world wants him dead. Why? Who knows.

The end of this novel unveils a Big Brother plot where everyone in the world (literally, everyone everywhere) is under computerized surveillance and no one will commit crime because everyone will know about it. Privacy will be non existent and they believe that everyone will be happy to have it. While I find the concept of having every house, every building bugged ridiculous, the methods by which the Prometheus group goes about implementing their plan is quite unnerving. I believe how they do it is completely possible in today's world. A conspiracy between a relatively small group of people, well funded and well placed, could cause this kind of havoc if left unchecked. I would like to think that it couldn't happen, but I have to admit it could. The worst part is that there probably isn't some Super James Bond type who can single handedly stop them.

This book, while interesting, becomes laughable at about three quarters through it. After awhile, it becomes silly that if this group has all this incredible surveillance capability, why can't they seem to kill this one guy. They miss him at least a dozen times. Get a sniper and take him out, for crying out loud. Clancy could have killed him easily! ( )

Boy was Ludlum prescient on this one! Terrorists are hitting hard all over. And so the demand for greater security is really taking off too. And guess who's benefiting? Not to give anything away, but while the details may differ, I think Ludlum's thriller is a great description of the Bush gang's modus operandi. ( )

A secret agent type is involved in a mostly successful operation against Hezbollah terrorists. He gets hurt, and has to recover back at his base. After this, he is shocked to find that his boss is getting rid of him.

It gets even more shocking than that when he realises that the clandestine small agency he works for is most definitely not what he thought it was, but actually a completely foreign operation that has sucked him in.

This is not all though, as another level of deception exists. Prometheus is a group of men that want to control all corporate information in the world, giving them immense power. A definite commentary on the consolidation of corporate influence and information can be found in this book.

He is reunited with his wife, but the story hasn't ended there.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2006/12/prometheus-deception-robert-ludlum.html ( )

Would have gotten 5 stars if it wasn't so long.
Love Ludlum, it is very good but not his best work. ( )