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The work and spirit of a master lives on...
Robert Ludlum departed from this side of the veil a couple of years ago. He left a variety of manuscripts prior to his death including THE JANSON DIRECTIVE, which was about 90% completed prior to his death, and then was edited by his long time agent, Henry Morrison and his editor, Keith Kahla.
Ludlum did not invent the master spy novel, but it is doubtful that the genre would exist in its present form without him. The plots are of a basic theme: take a larger than life hero and put him up against impossible odds with the price of failure being the fate of the free world. One would think that the variations on this theme would wear thin and in the hands of a less-able writer they would, and have. THE JANSON DIRECTIVE, however, is the finest of page-turners.
Our hero in this case is Paul Janson, an almost-legendary super-assassin who, weary of the bloodshed and brutality that marked his career, retired from the covert agency where he made his career and hired himself out as an industrial consultant. His retirement abruptly ends, however, when he is contacted by a representative of the Liberty Foundation, a private organization devoted to the cause of peace and democracy throughout the world. It seems that Peter Novak, founder of the Liberty Foundation --- and a man to whom Janson owes his life --- has been kidnapped by the forces of a terrorist known as The Caliph. Worse, Novak has been summarily scheduled for execution within a few days. Janson, at the request of the Liberty Foundation, assembles a crack team of operatives to rescue Novak.
The mission, against all odds, proceeds successfully until, within the span of a few moments, everything turns disastrous. In the aftermath, Janson is inexplicably marked for death by operatives at the highest level of the U.S. Government and finds himself on the run, unable to trust those formerly closest to him. And soon Novak finds himself pursued by Jessica Kincaid, Janson's protégé and an agent of breathtaking ability who knows all of his secrets and his weaknesses. There is a passage dealing intimately with the process of drowning that will leave you gasping for air. Literally every character from Janson to adversaries who pass into and out of the novel in a single paragraph, is interesting. Even the anticipation that all will end well, or reasonably so, by novel's end does not make the journey any less interesting, or compelling.
THE JANSON DIRECTIVE continues Ludlum's fine tradition of suspense writ on a global scale, dealing with topics that seem to be eerily prescient of tomorrow's headlines. Ludlum, through his work and the work which he inspired, truly lives on. There is no better epitaph than that.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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