Jason Bourne 18
My version: Hardback
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, Penguin Randon House
First published: 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-41988-5
Pages: 375
Bought
From the cover:
Someone’s killing Treadstone agents, and Jason Bourne may be next on the list, in this electrifying entry in Robert Ludlum’s #1 New York Times bestselling series.
From the glacial waters of Alaska to a sexy nightclub in the Bahamas, Treadstone agents are being hunted down and murdered. Someone high up in the U.S. government will stop at nothing to cover up secret a Treadstone mission from the past known as Defiance.
With a team of killers hot on his trail, Jason Bourne chases the mystery of Defiance around the world. But as he closes in on the shocking truth, Bourne realises that one man holds the key – his archenemy, the assassin known as Lennon. The Russian hit man has been at the heart of Defiance from the very beginning, and his next target will put Bourne – and the woman he loves – in the crosshairs.
As Bourne races to stop the ruthless conspiracy behind Defiance, he must come face-to-face with Lennon one last time – and the stage is set for a final violent showdown.
The last few Bourne books have been an improvement over the last couple of Eric Van Lustbader novels in the series. Absolutely nothing against Eric Van L’s writing, he did a superb job taking over from Robert Ludlum (after his death!), and bringing Bourne up to date, for the time. The last one and a half of Eric’s reign however, really felt like he’d already run out of steam and perhaps interest in the project and it was no surprise that he then announced he was stopping, the torch being passed to Brian Freeman. EvL had, in my opinion, taken Bourne too far away from the basics of the character, and what was the very popular image the public had at the time – the ‘film Bourne.’ Running around the world, eating caviar on mega-yachts owned by Russian oligarchs, wasn’t where Bourne needed to be to be popular as the more nitty-gritty ‘film Bourne’ showed. Brian Freeman seems to have basically ignored the EvL years, and taken ‘film Bourne’ as his starting point, though with some clever references to the origina Ludlum trilogy.
Here, we finally – and thankfully – see the end of ‘Lennon.’ A mistake if ever there was one. Unbelivable and irritating, just reading the cover notes and finding Lennon was going to be in the book, set my teeth on edge. That he didn’t get more of a spectacular, blown up by some horrendous internally digested bomb, the pieces scraped together and run over by a steam roller, death is a missed opportunity. Way, way too much of a Bond-like, cartoon baddie, with the whistling and the woman sidekick and the Beatles crap. Not even from Liverpool, either. Good riddance.
So, this is one to get rid of the author’s own created Bourne past and start anew next time. It’s better than a lot of the American ‘thriller’ crap I’ve read in my time, and the political angles remind me of the political power-play described by Vince Flynn in Term Limits. It was reasonably esciting, not a page-turner, but getting there, with the promise that the next one will be better. No nemesis for Bourne, no new secret cabal that even Bourne with all his zillions of years access to top secrets, no use of the phrase ‘off the books,’ or ‘black ops,’ please. I’ll be buying it of course (I’m pretty sure it’s on order as we speak), I’m fully committed to everything Bourne as you may be able to tell from a glance around the site, but I do try and remain objective and call out crap if I read it. It’s my money I’m wasting here, after all.
You can buy The Bourne Defiance by Brian Freeman from Amazon
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