Started off much better than it ended. Lots of action but too much of it predictable. I didn't particularly care for the female protaganist and got tired of the extended history lessons. Despite all that, the overall story was interesting enough that I wanted to finish the book to see how it ended. Touching...but kind of weak. ( )

This is my first Ludlum and it was what I expected and not. As I expected it had lots of twists, villains, backstabbing, a weak female lead, unbelievable heroics and narrow escapes. I had not expected zero swearing and little sex. Anna Navarro was useless for almost anything else so why not use her requisite ‘beauty’ to jog the story along? Nope. Let her bumbling incompetence be the guide. For an agent that is supposed to be so esteemed and successful, she makes a lot of mistakes. It was annoying. And the lack of swearing made the characters seem somehow less believable. Not a ‘shit’ was uttered even at the most extreme moments.

Of course Ben Hartman, an Ivy League pretty boy has all the innate skill to defeat international assassins. He is always more alert than he should have been and spots trouble before it begins. As if any normal person would behave this way. And of course, in the end they have to get away in a helicopter and having had one lesson where the pilot did most of the work, he can get them off the mountain and safe. Or so they think, there is a stow-away passenger who then tries to kill them. They defeat him of course. By this time, they are sleeping together and are now engaged to be married. How quaint.

The narrator was awesome I have to say. Every character (well almost, some of the Austrians sounded the same) sounded different. He can do French accents, mild Georgia southern accents, Austrian, Swiss, Paraguayan – you name it. He was excellent. Made it much more interesting to listen to than it would have been to read – it also gave some things away that wouldn’t have been so apparent in the printed version. There were some places where they heard just a voice before seeing the person and this narrator gave them their original accents so I could tell who they were. If I had been reading the book, I probably wouldn’t have caught it so soon.

This is the first Ludlum book I've read, and I enjoyed it, for the most part. It had a little bit too much bad guy monologging that I tended to skim, but I got the jist of it. I like spy/espionage/intrigue stories, and Ludlum is one of the best. ( )

Same old formula, pair of incredibly attractive and talented victims manage to avoid the clutches of an international Nazi conspiracy while everyone around them is assassinated. Better writing than Ludlum's earlier works--dialog is much better than Bourne. ( )

Typical Ludlum thriller in which a wealthy American gets sucked into a world of espionage and international conspiracy. Well-paced and wryly characterised, this made a great travel read. ( )