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35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This PROVES why Ludlum had NO equal in the 70's & 80's..., April 22, 2002
I was introduced to Ludlum in the late 70's by my brother who claimed that if I thought Clive Cussler was a good author, I needed to check out somebody who could really plot a story well. I started off with The Bourne Identity, which I still rank as one of the most original stories I have ever read. I waited quite some time before attempting 'Parisfal', and by the time I finally got around to doing so, it didn't take long to realize that I had cheated myself out of quite an adventure. I was going through my library here not long ago fixing up my book shelves when I ran across my old copy, and decided it was time to crack it open yet again. I was amazed at how well it has held up over the years, and just how REALLY GOOD it really is. I won't attempt to go into the details of the plot, because quite frankly, Ludlum puts just too many twists and turns into his average novel that just to attempt to summarize 'Parsifal' in such a short amount of room would be incredibly disrespectful to the memory of Robert Ludlum (in my opinion). No, instead I would rather go into what makes his novels so darned fun... Ludlum will never be confused with what some consider 'True Literature' but what he lacks in major character development, he more than makes up for with the sheer speed of his plots and how his stories seem to be several plots all going at once on a runaway train with no brakes...yet he manages to keep control at all of the crucial moments and never gives you more peeks into what is really happening than you absolutely MUST have, and yet you still have a grasp of what is going on, without knowing what is going to happen next. Is someone going to die in his books?
Yes...PLENTY of bodies stack up over the course of the typical Ludlum novel, but that really isn't what drives the story...it's the amazing creativity in which the story unfolds and the complexity in which the circumstances seem to rope you in to the point where if you don't continue to keep reading, you just may find yourself lost because of just how sophisticated he writes his thrillers. Many have called Ludlum the Master of the Superthriller, and I echo that in a HUGE way. In my opinion, 'The Parsifal Mosaic' is easily one of his top 2 books, which is high praise indeed when you consider his earlier & later works.
Simply put, if you have toyed with the idea of reading a Robert Ludlum novel and you have yet to check out 'Parsifal' than you are in for one incredible treat. Pick it up and get lost in one of the greatest imaginations in adventure thriller fiction of the past 40+ YEARS. Simply put, this is an absolutely amazing novel that is more fun than I can put into words...and I have to say, it is JUST as fun the 2nd time around, too. HIGHLY recommended.
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23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A bit clunky but still a page-turner, August 12, 2003
I'm a big Robert Ludlum fan, and love the spy / mystery type of novel. The Parsifal Mosaic is very involving and complex, and in general great fun. Without giving away the inner layers of the story, Michael Havelock is a US spy with a tortured past, who has finally found some happiness with a fellow spy, Jenna Karasova. Unfortunately, he is shown that Jenna is a double agent, and watches her die for her betrayal. Preparing to abandon his agent-life and retire to become a teacher, he catches a glimpse of Jenna, alive, at a chance meeting in Europe. The chase is on, as he tries to track down Jenna and figure out why she's alive, and who was deceiving who. There are a variety of interesting locations, from the docks of Italy to meeting rooms in Washington DC. The characters each seem to have an outward 'mask' plus an inner 'motive', and Michael moves from scene to scene trying to unravel it all. There are twists and turns as he gets closer and further away from the truth. Maybe it's because I've read so many mysteries and thrillers, but I do have to say that a few things disappointed me. First, many of the situations were extremely staged and obvious. There were many things that I guessed long before the characters did, and with the lead characters made out to be extremely intelligent and quick, it was hard to believe they were still muddling through something for chapters after it had been made obvious. For example, Michael recognizes one of the guys killing Jenna - Michael knows he knows him but doesn't remember WHO he is. Throughout the rest of the story, while trying to figure out what is going on, he never bothers to try to track this guy down. The identity of the two main secret characters was pretty obvious from the get-go but of course Michael doesn't figure it out until the very end. There were many "this situation proves that I am a master spy" setups that were clumsy and showed if anything that the people around him were completely clueless. I'm all for helping people learn "how spies act" and that "Michael was very good at spotting discrepancies" but if you read Spenser or Bond stories, that is done in a subtle, intelligent way. In this book it was more like a hammer slamming a staple. Rather overkill. And finally, the dialogue is over the top. It seems every page has "Oh my God!" or "Christ!" or "Jesus!" or "You Bastards!" It's sort of like wading through a spy soap opera :) Don't get me wrong - I do enjoy Ludlum a great deal and ripped through the book in a single evening. I enjoyed the ride, but I did keep feeling like I was hitting a "speed bump" along the way that I'd have to roll my eyes about, and then keep going. A fun read for a day at the beach, or an escapist evening!
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34 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A guilty pleasure for the discerning reader, April 9, 1999
By A Customer
One feels almost shame in enjoying the works of Robert Ludlum. The dialogue steps out of the Stone Age onto the paper (the phrases "my friend" and "spell it out" are used overgenerously), the melodrama is suffocating (ditto the words "madness" and "insanity", always in italics and always followed with an exclamation point), and the characters are photocopies of each other from book to book. Meanwhile, the good-guy spy is over-romanticized, the stuff of a fourteen year-old girl's wildest fantasies. The problem is, Ludlum is so darned fun to read. And, as his novels go, The Parsifal Mosaic is among the best. This might be directly related to the sky-high body count, but it's Ludlum: get used to it. I felt almost guilty the first time I acknowledged to myself that the bloodbath trick--someone getting killed every four pages or so--never gets old. No one said this guy was Tolstoy. He's not even John LeCarre or Frederick Forsyth. But nor are they Robert Ludlum. If you want pragmatism, realism, and a spy hero who gets his hands dirty, eats corn flakes, and drives a Taurus, then read LeCarre (the master of characterization) or Forsyth (the master of the political thriller). But none of their work gives you quite the same thrill as sitting down with Robert Ludlum... ...while he blows away five hundred people with machine guns.
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