His quest to find his identity leads to disturbing implications that he might be an assassin. The simple premise** is: A man is pulled from the sea riddled with bullets and without a memory. Dixon was suddenly interspersed with regular doses of Ludlum (the brick-like paperbacks comically thick compared to the slim Hardy Boys Casefiles), John Gardner (whose Bond novels at the time were easier to come by than his predecessor’s), and, when I could find them, Ian Fleming (the initial thirst simply to get my hands on every book led directly to my appetite for collecting the first editions and various paperback runs). What other genre lent itself to plots so ingeniously complex? My steady diet of Franklin W. From the moment I read The Bourne Identity, I wanted to write about spies. But I skipped the phase of wanting to be a spy. Sure, I fully appreciated the escapist aspects of the genre-particularly those faraway, exotic European cities. That plot probably attracted me most of all.

And I was utterly absorbed by the twistiest, cleverest, most intricate plot my hungry young mind had yet encountered. I was absolutely transfixed by this exciting world of assassins and spies and Swiss banks and fiches confidentielles and gunfights and car chases through faraway European streets. Then my Aunt Joan gave me a pair of Robert Ludlum novels for Christmas (the other one was The Gemini Contenders), and my life was forever changed. (I suppose I was a late bloomer in that respect.) Up until then, I’d been voraciously devouring Hardy Boys books. I first read it in sixth grade-the same year I discovered Bond. Not the perfect novel, mind you (it’s got some definite flaws), but the perfect spy novel.* It’s also probably more responsible even than the James Bond books for making me a fan of the genre.

The Bourne Identity is the perfect spy novel.

The bourne identity by robert ludlum