Customer Reviews

The Matarese Countdown

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(20)
1 star:		(56)

 

 

I have been a fan of Ludlum's work for years and his Bourne trilogy in particular are all time classics. I also loved The Matarese Circle so when The Matarese Countdown appeared, I couldn't wait to lay my hands on it. But there it stopped. This book I struggled to finish whereas earlier Ludlum's I could not put down. What happened here? The plot is very thin, the dialogues horribly amateurish. Ludlum's gift was an ability to tip an unbelievable situation just over the edge and make you think hey, perhaps, just perhaps, this could happen! Sorry, not this time. The list of improbable situations is just too long. The plotline is not even 1% believable. The characters are stereotyped to the limit. The tip off is is the absence of classic Ludlum phrases and concepts ("lies", "madness") and the absence of a catchphrase ("Perro Nostro Circulo", "Cain is for Charlie and Delta is for Cain") and so many other Ludlum specialities which gives the game away.

I know I have no formal evidence as such, but for my money, this book was not written by Robert Ludlum. Only his name has been lent to it.

For all admirers of RL's work, avoid this one if you want to retain your good memory of him.

I have been a Ludlum fan ever since my older brother informed me that 'The Bourne Identity' was easily one of the best thrillers ever written...well I loved that book, but I enjoyed 'The Materese Circle' even MORE. I nearly fainted with surprise when I saw 'The Materese Countdown' on the bookshelf...not knowing at all that a sequel was even in the works. B-u-u-u-t after 'The Scorpio Illusion' I was becoming a bit skeptical at Ludlums ability to write world-class thrillers...however I picked it up anyway and then it sat on my shelf for quite some time. After having read the reviews here periodically I put off reading it even longer...but once again it goes to show you how each person is unique and has VERY different views of the same thing.

I happened to have enjoyed this 2nd outing into the world of the Materese. Nowhere did I see the discrepancies in Ludlum's writing style that many are saying that they recognized...and I am not a novice Ludlum reader, either. I've been reading all of his books (and I stress ALL) since the late 70's. Now I WILL admit that 'Countdown' was far from his best thriller, however it was a great deal better than 'The Scorpio Illusion' which was okay, but seemed like the same old story re-packaged. It was great to re-visit the lives of Beowolf Agate and Toni...and fondly remember how the bad guy from the Cold War (Taleniekov) became one of his greatest characters. No, this isn't the best of Ludlum's books, but he has several which are far worse than this one, too. Judge for yourself. I can't recall the last time I read so many reviews that opposed each other so much. It seemed that most people either loved it or hated it. I was somewhat in between, with a lean more towards the 'loved it' side. My personal opinion is that after writing so many novels about spying for so long, it really IS difficult to write something entirely new and fresh...and since the Cold War ended, people no longer want to read about 'Them Vs Us' anymore...but as long as I can find a good spy novel, I know that I'll be buying them and re-living the Cold War days for many years to come...unfortunately since the recent death of Mr. Ludlum, we won't get that great opportunity from him. A great literary loss if you ask me. Goodbye Robert Ludlum. You WILL be missed.

I've read almost every book Ludlum has written and this was by far the worse. In fact, I found it written so poorly, that I have a hard time believing he actually wrote it. The characters were two-dimensional and the dialog was cheesy. Put the story into an outline, and it's great... but whoever developed this outline into a novel did a poor job. If you're a Ludlum lover, stay away from this book.

Made the mistake of not scrolling through all reviews to see that the vast majority of readers panned this book. In this case, numbers tell the story. Like other readers, I just couldn't believe that the author of one of my favorite books, The Matarese Circle, could have written this sequel. The characters in The Matarese Countdown bear no relationship to the original cast of "Circle". The tension of the unlikely duo in "Circle", the intellectual and physical skills of two spies at the top of their game, is nowhere to be found in "Countdown". The new characters are never developed, and the old characters are no longer engaging. If, like me, you still find it difficult to believe how inferior this book is, at least try to borrow it from the library or buy it at a rummage sale for 50 cents.

Having had at least an amiable relationship with Robert Ludlum before, and having balanced his somewhat lacking books with good books, like the matarese circle, I was looking forward to this book. And the first part of it builds up to something really good. We have world-wide conspiracies, corruption, deadly assanins and a general trust-no one atmosphere. Ludlum really does his best at making us wonder who, if anyone, you can trust, and by about 1/3 into the book, it seems as if this all-powerful cabal will crush the world, and one is left to wonder how Mr. Ludlum will manage to pull all the strings together and unravel the mysteries to a satisfactory conclusion.

Well... Obviously the same thoughts must have popped up in Ludlum's mind, and he obviously had no better notion of the answer than did I. For it soon becomes clear that with the picture of all-reaching corruption that is painted in the first part of the book, there is just no way that the next couple of hundred pages can somehow bring down this powerhouse and make the main characters live happily ever after in anything approaching a believable manner. So we are left with desperate shortcuts, where the main character suddenly just goes and says something cryptically suggestive to a central person in this cabal, and he suddenly folds and - tadaa - that branch of the cabal is incapacitated. Expect slack-jawed astonishment at some of the short cuts and disregard for blindingly obvious facts that Mr. Ludlum thinks he can get away with.

In addition to this, of course, the utterly laughable dialogue can be painful to behold. Quite apart from just about every other sentence ending in an exclamation point, and just about every other word being italicized, Ludlum seems to believe that a normal British way of saying good morning is something like, "Tally Ho, chaps! I say. Splendid day, I believe? Capital. Indeed."

The two stars given are mainly for the beginning, where the feeling of being up against an all-powerful monster is tangible, which deserves perhaps as much as 4 stars. The end, where we find out that the cabal was in fact about as well run and powerful as an old folks' home, deserves little more than one star.

I found that the characters spoke so artificially in this novel that I was laughing out loud at times. The plot was ridiculously far fetched, but I just might try another Ludlum to see if he can do better!

I bought Matarese Countdown because I have read all of Mr. Ludlum's novels. Absent strong reviews for any future works, this is the last I'll bother reading. The gripping turns of the plot that made his early works page turners are more contrived than ever in this one. To say that the dialogue is wooden is a serious insult to our friends from the plant kingdom. The narrative is downright silly in places, and even contains obvious grammatical errors (which the editor should have caught).

This book continues an apparent downward trend in quality; though nearly as poorly written, at least the Cry of the Halidon had an interesting plot.

Certainly not Mr.Ludlum,I stake my life on that comment.It is the worse book I have read with his name on it.I know that latter books published since his death are obviously not written by him,his name is just a trade-mark now,so one has to be careful buying R.Ludlum books.This I thought would be by him.It is the most disjointed,exagerrated,childish,foolish script I ever have read.It shows no writing skill at all and is written by some cheap 2 page pulp writer from the 1950`s-or seems that way.Save your money like I didn`t!! and give it a huge miss-I ask myself how anyone who wrote the superb Rheinman Exchange could have written this-impossible,he did not and its a publishing rip-off.

Very rarely have I read a book that I have been so frustrated with. The book is riddled with poor plot and poor dialogue. The plot tries to take over where The Matarese Circle left off, but does so unsuccessfully. The author includes too much pre-story for first-time readers and drastically clutters the plotline. Dialogue is very cheesy and repetitive e.g. "pig of the world!". The inclusion of the black pilot seems very forced and doesn't quite mesh with the general plot. The plot becomes hard to follow with the myriad of characters who never really develop or change. The relationships between the main character is very obvious and seems an afterthought. There is no stress in the romance. It just appears. The book takes way too long, is very anti-climatic, and lacks any strong finishing point. Whatever respect for Ludlum I once had has disappeared with my finishing of this novel. What is normally a sense of gratification at the end of the book, has become a sense of mental rape.

It's always sad to see a sports professional stay around for one season too many. Unfortuantely, that, in a nutshell, is all that needs to be said about The Matarese Countdown. It was a complete struggle to finish the book. I therefore recommend that other readers not waste their time by even starting this novel. Good editors and publishers should have the guts to tell their authors when it is time to quit. Obvious, ol' Bobby got some bum advice.