Robert Ludlum

Robert Ludlum, perhaps most well known for his Jason Bourne thriller action sereies, was privately educated, and attended ‘Cheshire Academy’ in Connecticut.

Before he acted on Broadway in a comedy called ‘Junior Miss’ when he was 16, he’d already been appearing in school theatrics. His main ambition though was to play quarterback in football.

He tried to join the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II, but failed, winding up serving as infantryman in the Marin Corps. from 1945-1947. He was stationed in the South Pacific, and this is where he wrote a 200 page manuscript of his impressions there.

After studying at Wesleyan university, in Middletown, He received a BA in 1951. That same year he was married to an actress named Mary Ryducha, with whom he had three children.

From the mid-70′s, Ludlum was writing full time. He moved his family from Leonia, New Jersey to Long Island, and bought a 200 year old clapboard farmhouse. They had their second home in Florida.

Robert traveled extensively collecting background material to put in his novels. Soon Paris became his most beloved city.

The Bourne identity (1980), started off as a whole series of novels, where an American counter-assassin, with a near superhuman enemy (Carlos), have confrontations in various places all over the world.
The Carlos character is based partly on Ramirez Sanchez, a Venezuelan born terrorist, who was captured in real life in Sudan in 1994.

Lived: 1927 - 2001

Author Of

The Scorpio Illusion

Amaya Bajaratt is 30-something, sun-tanned and stunning – “The Baj” is her name and vengeance her game. She’s the most brilliant female terrorist alive, a tactical genius. Her target is the US President.

The Sigma Protocol

American investment banker Ben Hartman, son of legendary Max Hartman, who built a financial empire up from next to nothing, is on holiday in Switzerland when he meets a childhood friend who promptly tries to kill him. Ben narrowly survives the attempt, and when he wakes up he discovers that the body and all evidence(…)

The Tristan Betrayal

Moscow-a city under siege by hardcore Communists threatening to plunge the country back into Stalinist darkness. Into the heart of the firestorm, American ambassador Stephen Metcalf has been summoned to find the one man who controls the levers of power in absolute secrecy-an official known only as the Dirizhor. His support of the bloody coup(…)

Trevayne

Brilliant, fearless, incorruptible, Andrew Trevayne was a self-made millionaire at thirty-five, former Undersecretary of State, current head of one of the nation’s most prestigious foundations. Now, at the express wish of the president, Trevayne undertakes an investigation into the “secret government”—and is swept up in a tidal wave of intrigue and danger beyond the corridors(…)

The Hades Factor

A homeless man in Boston, an Army Major in California, and a teenage girl in Atlanta all die suddenly and painfully – each a victim of an unknown doomsday virus. For three days, a team of scientists in a US government laboratory has been frantically trying to unlock the virus’s secrets. Lt. Col. Jonathan ‘Jon’(…)

The Cassandra Compact

The powerful and prescient new novel in the bestselling Covert-One series. Lt. Colonel Jon Smith, currently working as a medical researcher, is contacted by a Russian colleague with an urgent request that they meet in Venice in ten days. When they meet, however, his colleague is killed almost instantly in a hail of automatic gunfire(…)

The Paris Option

A fiery explosion in the dark of night shatters one of the laboratory buildings in Paris’s esteemed Pasteur Institute. Among the dead is Emile Chambord, one of the leaders in the global race to create a molecular – or DNA – computer. Unfortunately, Professor Chambord kept the details of his work secret, and his notes(…)

The Altman Code

On the dark waterside docks of Shanghai, a photographer records cargo being secretly loaded. He’s brutally killed and his camera destroyed. Two weeks later on the dangerous high seas, the U.S. Navy covertly tracks a Chinese ship rumored to carry tons of chemicals for Saddam Hussein to create new biological weapons. The President cannot let(…)

The Bourne Identity

The first of three novels about Jason Bourne, hero extraordinaire, and a man who leaves no stone unturned. It is now a major movie starring Matt Damon . Who is Jason Bourne? And why does he have four million dollars in a Swiss bank account. It is a good question. And one, to which, Jason(…)

The Bourne Supremacy

Kowloon – in a smoky cabaret a murder is committed. In his own blood the Taipan writes 11 letters – and Jason Bourne announces his return. But who is Bourne now? The quiet professor trying to forget past heartbreak or the most proficient master of killing the world has ever known?

The Bourne Ultimatum

Jason Bourne, hero of “The Bourne Identity” and “The Bourne Supremacy”, is forced out of retirement in this novel by his old enemies the Jackal and Medusa.

The Apocalypse Watch

Deep in the Hausruck Mountains of Austria there is a remote hideaway – the fortress-like nerve centre of an ominous movement, the Brotherhood of the Watch. American agent Harry Latham has penetrated the movement, but now, after three years in deep cover, he has disappeared.

The Lazarus Vendetta

In the increasingly turbulent atmosphere of international politics, the once grassroots anti-globalisation movement has been slowly absorbed and taken over by the underground radical anti-technology group fronted by a mysterious figure known only as Lazarus. All attempts to infiltrate the group have failed and the intelligence agents involved have all disappeared without a trace. Now(…)

The Moscow Vector

At an international conference in Prague, Lt. Col. Jon Smith, an Army research doctor specializing in infectious diseases and secretly an agent attached to Covert-One, is contacted by a Russian colleague, Dr. Valentine Petrenko. Petrenko is concerned about a small cluster of mysterious deaths in Moscow and about the Russian government’s refusal to release publicly(…)

The Rhineman Exchange

Autumn 1943. Global espionage elite converge on Buenos Aires. Intense, high-level covert negotiations will soon bear dangerous fruit with the aid of expatriate German industrialist Erich Rhinemann. American agent David Spaulding will be there. His top-secret mission can bring the war to an explosive end. But what happens here in this city of assassins, double(…)

The Ambler Warning

Hal Ambler is held in a facility for insane agents and is himself being drugged to a point where he cannot trust his own crumbling sanity. Even when he escapes, he is unable to be sure of his own past and identity–his very face is not as he remembers, let alone his fishing cabin and(…)

The Aquitaine Progression

An epic of massive betrayal from the master of action. Joel Converse is a highly successful American lawyer and hero of Vietnam. He is an intelligent but cold man, embittered by his war experiences. On business in Geneva he is approached by an old school friend under an assumed name, who puts Converse on the(…)

The Cry of the Halidon

A tale of human endurance, fear and murder as Alex McAuliff is ordered into the savage depths of the Jamaican jungle to discover the secrets of a native tribe called The Halidon.

The Gemini Contenders

A train winds through Italy towards the Alps with a precious cargo on board. The cargo is a box containing papers that could destroy the Christian world. Savarone is responsible for the documents’ safety but he’s marked for death by the Nazis.

The Icarus Agenda

This thriller set in the Sultanate of Oman, and concerns the holding of 200 hostages and a quiet but deadly man who is thrust into the madness of power politics.

The Matarese Circle

A former director of the KGB and the West’s most professional assassin join forces against a common enemy, the Matarese Circle.

The Chancellor Manuscript

DID J. EDGAR DIE A NATURAL DEATH? . . . OR WAS HE MURDERED? Inver Brass-a group of high-minded and high-placed intellectuals who see a monstrous threat to the country in Hoover’s unethical use of his scandal-ridden private files. They decide to do away with him-quietly, efficiently, with no hint of impropriety. Until best-selling thriller(…)

The Holcroft Covenant

The Fourth Reich is waiting to be born. The only man who can stop it is about to sign its birth certificate. In 1945 the children of the Third Reich were secretly hidden all over the world-to be concealed until the 1970’s, when they would come of age. Then the most elaborate plans and $780(…)

The Jansen Directive

One of the world’s greatest men has been kidnapped. Nobel laureate, international financier, and philanthropist Peter Novak – a billionaire who has committed his life and fortune to fostering democracy around the world through his Liberty Foundation – has been captured by the forces led by the near-mythical terrorist known as The Caliph. Holding Novak(…)

The Matarese Countdown

Twenty years ago, top agents from the CIA and KGB banded together to bring down the Matarese Circle, an international cabal of powerbrokers and assassins whose sole objective was to achieve worldwide economic domination. Now the bloody Matarese dynasty is back–and the only man with the power to stop it may have already run out(…)

The Matlock Paper

A man is assigned to investigate a large-scale drugs and prostitution business. Does he realise what the ultimate effect on his personal life will be?

The Osterman Weekend

John Tanner is looking forward to a weekend party with his closest friends, the Ostermans, the Tremaynes and the Cardones. But then the CIA tell him that they are all suspected Soviet agents: fanatical, traitorous killers working for a massive Communist conspiracy. Tanner cannot know who are his friends and who are his deadly enemies.

The Parsifal Mosaic

Michael has the key that connects him to the madman codenamed Parsifal, whose manoeuvres in the citadels of power have brought the whole of humankind to the brink of destuction. Michael must be killed on sight.

The Road to Gandolfo

The Principal Cast: General Mackenzie Hawkings, legend, hero, rogue. Sam Devereaux, bright young lawyer from Harvard, now in the army, can’t wait to get out. General Hawken’s four ex-wives, a quartet of incredibly endowed women who’ve formed a club: Hawkin’s Harem. The Premise: Kidnap Pope Francesco I, the most beloved pontiff since John XX III.(…)

The Prometheus Deception

Nicholas Bryson spent years as a deep cover operative for the American secret intelligence group, The Directorate. After a disastrous mission, Bryson was retired to a new identity. Now, years later, his cover is cracked and Bryson learns that The Directorate was not what it claimed that he was, in fact, a pawn being used(…)

The Road to Omaha

In The Road To Gandolfo, Robert Ludlum introduced us to the outrageous General MacKenzie Hawkins and his legal wizard, Sam Devereaux, whose plot to kidnap the Pope spun wildly out of control into sheer hilarity. Now Ludlum’s two wayward heroes return with a diabolical scheme to right a very old wrong — and wreak vengeance(…)

The Scarlatti Inheritance

A story of international terror and intrigue, greed and cunning, suspense and murder, revolving around a file whose contents will destroy many of the Western world’s greatest reputations if they are made known.

All Action, All the Time