Robert Ludlum gave the espionage novel its paranoia and its pace. His world is one of shadow agencies, buried secrets and ordinary men who wake up inside conspiracies far larger than themselves, most famously Jason Bourne, the amnesiac assassin of The Bourne Identity.
Globe-spanning, breathless and built on the fear that the people in charge are not who they claim to be, his thrillers defined a genre and inspired decades of imitators and films. The tension rarely lets up long enough to catch your breath.
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