Book review: The Bourne Initiative

JASON Bourne is the late Robert Ludlum's most enduring creation. A field agent more 'programmed and engineered' than trained by the mysterious Treadstone covert agency of the US military, this character has spearheaded 14 novels, a television mini-series, and five films.
In more ways than one, Bourne is a far more physical James Bond. In fact, Bourne rarely falters throughout The Bourne Initiative.
This is despite being hacked at with a machete, shot, and poisoned in his mission to stop the eponymous Initiative – a cyber weapon created to steal vast amounts of money by his late friend, General Boris Karpov, of the Russian FSB.
Nefarious forces are now using it to gain access to US nuclear launch codes.
Interestingly, Ludlum (who died in 2001) may have created Bourne, but he only wrote the first three adventures. In the 1980s, Eric Van Lustbader was recruited to write the subsequent novels.
Van Lustbader's writing is based more on action and style than Ludlum's, who was more concerned with characterisation and depth of story.
Consequently, while a gripping ride, Van Lustbader's novels are more Hollywood glam and non-stop action, rather than the intriguing stories of the first books.
Here, the NSA believes Bourne controls the cyber weapon. Forced to come out of hiding and hunted by assassins, Bourne eventually has to join forces with his enemy, Keyre, the Somali terrorist whose organisation Bourne once decimated.
The Bourne Initiative takes the readers on a thrilling ride from the Greek island of Skyros to the underbelly of Moscow where Bourne must unravel the mystery and truth of Karpov's last legacy – a weapon that may lead to the end of the US.