Despite having seen the movie of The Bourne Identity, I could recall very little of it. Therefore reading the book made me feel a little like Jason Bourne: fragments, names, and faces coming back to me at irregular intervals, but with no context in which to place them. I’ve never been all over Europe trying to figure out who I am, but novelist Robert Ludlum, made me feel as if I was there trying to search what my real identity was. The story of a man who was shot several times and dumb in the ocean, picked up by a drunken sailor.
The story is how the a man found nearly dead in the ocean, try’s to figure out what his identity, the story is told by a characters named Jason Bourne, who remembers, bits of pieces of his life because he suffers from Amnesia. A man is discovered unconscious in the sea at Ile de Port Noir, a small island on the coast of France. He has no memory and no name. His face carries signs of plastic surgery, and a tiny microfilm implanted into his thigh bears a number which leads to a bank account in Zurich. At times of extreme duress and danger, he exhibits certain fighting and survival instincts, for which he has no explanation.
After his recovery under the care of the alcoholic British doctor Geoffrey Washburn, he finds the bank in Switzerland, which holds four million dollars in his name, Jason Bourne. He transfers varying sums of money to different banks around the world, and the alarm bells begin to toll. He has been recognized by someone who thought he was dead, who wants him dead. News of his emergence reaches the ears of the CIA, and of a professional assassin named Carlos. Bourne finds himself caught between a rock and a hard place as he tries to understand his past, which comes back to him intermittently in flashes, remembering a place, a building, a street.
In a desperate bid to escape his pursuers, he kidnaps a woman named Marie St Jacques, a Canadian financial whiz. Together they try to piece together his past, and keep each other alive. Who is he? Who does he work for? Whose side is he on? The quote that describes the setting, “welcome-to-Zurich folders placed in the elasticized pockets in1 front of his seat in the plane? ” This quote describes theme, “The j was for Jason! His name was Jason Bourne. ” Description of the characters, Jason Bourne is but one of many aliases used by David Webb.
Webb is a career foreign service officer and a specialist in Eastern affairs. Evidence that plastic surgery has altered his face to “soften” his features, making him able to blend in with a crowd, and completely change his appearance with contact lenses, hair dye, or a bit of facial hair. French, English, Spanish, Mandarin, and Cantonese: in all of which he is completely fluent. Webb went to Saigon and, under the careful guidance of Alex Conklin, ended up training for an elite Top Secret Special Forces unit called Medusa.
Within that select organization, Webb was known only by his code name, Delta One. Another character, name Marie St. Jacque, was a Canadian citizen working for the Canadian government. Marie St. Jacques was kidnapped by Jason Bourne, who in turn actually helps Jason in finding his real identity. The story is set in several Europe countries including, France, and Zurich Switzerland. The book relates to the real world because there are people working for the C. I. A and I’m sure some of them are assassins for the C. I. A.
The books that compare to the Bourne identity are, The Last Spymaster by Gayle Lynds, Empire State by Henry Porter, Final Winter by Brendan DuBois, The Payback by Simon Kernick, The Firm by John Grisham. The type of people that would to read this type of novel, would be people that like spy thrillers. Also, the type of people, who are looking for an adventure through a good book and a surprise ending. My feeling of the book are very good one. This is one of the best thriller plots ever written. Let’s be clear that this is in no way the same as the Matt Damon movie, which is a pretty poor shadow of Ludlum’s brilliant story.
If you can put this book down, it’ll be a rare achievement; it keeps you on your toes all the way through and the final twists of the plot aren’t revealed until the very end. This book is in dough one of the best well written spy novels, I’ve ever read. Through the struggles going all over Europe trying to discover who you are, was a real attention getter for me. Jason Bourne is probably still going to be chased throughout the novels. What will happen at the end of this book? Well, you’re just going to have to read it to find out.
