From Publishers Weekly
Veteran thriller maestro Lustbader (Black Heart, etc.) seizes the reins of Robert Ludlum's bestselling Jason Bourne series, proving that even Ludlum's death can't stop the ex-CIA operative. David Webb, a mild-mannered Georgetown professor, harbors his old Bourne identity deep within his psyche—except in moments of danger. A mysterious assassin, Khan, has targeted Webb. Seeking counsel from his old CIA handler, Alex Conklin, Webb arrives at Conklin's home to find him, along with Webb's psychiatrist and friend, Mo Panov, murdered. Unsurprisingly, it's a setup, and Webb is declared a rogue agent and the prime suspect. His only clue to the real killer is a pad of paper with a faint impression of the notation "NX 20." Meanwhile, in Reykjavik, preparations are underway for the upcoming summit on worldwide terrorism. Even the dimmest thriller reader will immediately intuit that Bourne, pursued by the world's leading intelligence agencies, will end up in Iceland confronting some evildoer out to wreak havoc on the international terror conference. And thus it comes to pass. Lustbader has wisely eschewed mimicking Ludlum's signature style—short punchy paragraphs with lots of exclamation points. His own prose, often cliche-ridden ("Khan felt as if his brain was about to explode. He was shaken to his very foundation"), is perfectly serviceable, effectively conveying the myriad cinematic hairsbreadth escapes, crosses, double crosses, explosions, furious fisticuffs and careening plot twists. It's a hearty serving of meat and potatoes action adventure, just the sort of fare that both Ludlum's and Lustbader's fans relish. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From AudioFile
Jason Bourne, former CIA agent, now David Webb, linguistics professor at Georgetown University, is framed for the murder of two associates and becomes an assassin's target. Forced to resume his former identity, Bourne resurrects his survival skills. Scott Brick depicts Bourne as focused and deadly--willing to risk everything in his pursuit of the murderer, who has a bio-weapon that threatens millions. Well-done British and French accents add to the narration. Espionage, betrayals, and torture culminate in a shocking encounter with a family member from Bourne's past. Eric Van Lustbader skillfully resurrects the Bourne character created by the late Robert Ludlum. G.D.W. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Three of Robert Ludlum's novels featured the fictional character Jason Bourne. Now comes a Bourne novel not by Ludlum but by Van Lustbader, the author of 20 novels that had nothing to do with Bourne. The publisher assures readers that the individuals who control Ludlum's estate have given their permission to create this new novel. Here and now, Bourne, described as "an international assassin of deadly repute," has retired from the CIA and is a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University. He has been framed for the murder of two associates and becomes the target of an assassin. The novel begins in Chechnya and continues in such diverse places as Nairobi, Crete, Washington, D.C., and Budapest. The many-paged narrative provides ample room for lots of action, including a body found in a refrigerator, "shared joy" between lovers, fistfights, gun battles, torture, and deceit. The Bourne Legacy reads much like Ludlum, which, of course, is exactly the point. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
"Welcome To Robert Ludlum's World...fast pacing, tight plotting, international intrigue." -Cleveland Plain Dealer

The Bourne Supremacy
"The Bourne Supremacy is high-voltage entertainment and quite honestly, impossible to put down."-Washington Times

"Constant intrigue, action aplenty, bloody good fun."-USA Today

"Welcome back, Jason Bourne...the action is fast, exciting, and, at times, a bit bloody. He doesn't disappoint his readers in The Bourne Supremacy."-Pittsburgh Press

"Ludlum has never come up with a more head-spinning, spine-jolting, intricately mystifying, Armageddonish-in short, Ludlumesque-thriller than this...A surefire bestseller."-Publishers Weekly

The Bourne Identity
"Very fast, very violent, and very fascinating."-Chicago Tribune

"The surprises keep coming until the very last page."-International Herald Tribune

"A superb cloak-and-dagger melodrama...enough excitement to exhaust the hardiest reader."-St. Louis Post-Dispatch



Book Description
Once, Jason Bourne was notorious in the clandestine world of covert-ops as one of the CIA's most expert international killers for hire. Out of the ashes of his violent past he's emerged today as a Georgetown professor, living a quiet life, retired from danger-until he narrowly escapes the bullet of a faceless assassin. And when two of Bourne's closest associates are murdered, Bourne knows that his legacy has followed him-and set him up as prime suspect for the brutal crimes.

The quicksand of lies and betrayals is deeper than Bourne ever imagined. Hunted by the CIA as a dangerous rogue agent, he has only one option to stay alive-and one last chance to stay one step ahead of an unseen assailant whose vengeance is personal. Pursued across the globe, Bourne's on the run, and on the edge of discovering the truth-that he's become the expendable pawn in an international terrorist plot. One that's taking every living witness with it and plunging Bourne one step closer to the world-shattering consequences of...



From the Back Cover
Jason Bourne Returns From The Shadows As The World's #1 Assassin...
Once, Jason Bourne was notorious in the clandestine world of covert-ops as one of the CIA's most expert international killers for hire. Out of the ashes of his violent past he's emerged today as a Georgetown professor, living a quiet life, retired from danger-until he narrowly escapes the bullet of a faceless assassin. And when two of Bourne's closest associates are murdered, Bourne knows that his legacy has followed him-and set him up as prime suspect for the brutal crimes.

And The World's #1 Target.
The quicksand of lies and betrayals is deeper than Bourne ever imagined. Hunted by the CIA as a dangerous rogue agent, he has only one option to stay alive-and one last chance to stay one step ahead of an unseen assailant whose vengeance is personal. Pursued across the globe, Bourne's on the run, and on the edge of discovering the truth-that he's become the expendable pawn in an international terrorist plot. One that's taking every living witness with it and plunging Bourne one step closer to the world-shattering consequences of...

The Bourne Legacy

Kept "[the] surprises coming till the very last page." -International Herald Tribune on The Bourne Idenity

Gripped as "a killer of a thriller!" -USA Today on The Bourne Supremacy


Visit the Robert Ludlum™ Web site at www.ludlumbooks.com



About the Author
Eric Van Lustbader is the author of numerous novels in a variety of styles, but is most widely known as the author of twenty international bestselling thrillers including The Ninja and Black Heart. Born in New York City, he currently lives in New York State.



Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER ONE


David Webb, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, was buried beneath a stack of ungraded term papers. He was striding down the musty back corridors of gargantuan Healy Hall, heading for the office of Theodore Barton, his department head, and he was late, hence this shortcut he had long ago discovered using narrow, ill-lighted passageways few students knew about or cared to use.

There was a benign ebb and flow to his life bound by the strictures of the university. His year was defined by the terms of the Georgetown semesters. The deep winter that began them gave grudging way to a tentative spring and ended in the heat and humidity of the second semester's finals week. There was a part of him that fought against serenity, the part that thought of his former life in the clandestine service of the U.S. government, the part that kept him friends with his former handler, Alexander Conklin.

He was about to round a corner when he heard harsh voices raised and mocking laughter and saw ominous-seeming shadows playing along the wall.

"Muthfucka, we gonna make your gook tongue come out the back of your head!''

Bourne dropped the stack of papers he had been carrying and sprinted around the corner. As he did so, he saw three young black men in coats down to their ankles arrayed in a menacing semicircle around an Asian, trapping him against a corridor wall. They had a way of standing, their knees slightly bent, their upper limbs loose and swinging slightly that made their entire bodies seem like blunt and ugly aspects of weapons, cocked and ready. With a start, he recognized their prey was Rongsey Siv, a favorite student of his.

"Muthafucka,'' snarled one, wiry, with a strung-out, reckless look on his defiant face, "we come in here, gather up the goods to trade for the bling-bling.''

"Can't ever have enough bling-bling,'' said another with an eagle tattoo on his cheek. He rolled a huge gold square-cut ring, one of many on the fingers of his right hand, back and forth. "Or don't you know the bling-bling, gook?''

"Yah, gook,'' the strung-out one said, goggle-eyed. "You don't look like you know shit.''

"He wants to stop us,'' the one with the tattooed cheek said, leaning in toward Rongsey. "Yah, gook, whatcha gonna do, kung-fuckin-fu us to death?''

They laughed raucously, making stylized kicking gestures toward Rongsey, who shrank back even farther against the wall as they closed in.

The third black man, thick-muscled, heavyset, drew a baseball bat from underneath the voluminous folds of his long coat. ``That right. Put your hands up, gook. We gonna break your knuckles good.'' He slapped the bat against his cupped palm. "You want it all at once or one at a time?''

"Yo,'' the strung-out one cried, "he don't get to choose.'' He pulled out his own baseball bat and advanced menacingly on Rongsey.'

As the strung-out kid brandished his bat, Webb came at them. So silent was his approach, so intent were they on the damage they were about to inflict that they did not become aware of him until he was upon them.

He grabbed the strung-out kid's bat in his left hand as it was coming down toward Rongsey's head. Tattoo-cheek, on Webb's right, cursed mightily, swung his balled fist, knuckles bristling with sharp-edged rings, aiming for Webb's ribs.

In that instant, from the veiled and shadowed place inside Webb's head the Bourne persona took firm control. Webb deflected the blow from tattoo-cheek with his biceps, stepped forward and slammed his elbow into tattoo-cheek's sternum. He went down, clawing at his chest.

The third thug, bigger than the other two, cursed and, dropping his bat, pulled a switchblade. He lunged at Webb, who stepped into the attack, delivering a short, sharp blow to the inside of the assailant's wrist. The switchblade fell to the corridor floor, skittering away. Webb hooked his left foot behind the other's ankle and lifted up. The big thug fell on his back, turned over and scrambled away.

Bourne yanked the baseball bat out of the strung-out thug's grip. "Muthafuckin' Five-O,'' the thug muttered. His pupils were dilated, unfocused by the effects of whatever drugs he'd taken. He pulled a gun---a cheap Saturday-night special---and aimed it at Webb.

With deadly accuracy, Webb flung the bat, striking the strung-out thug between the eyes. He staggered back, crying out, and his gun went flying.

Alerted by the noise of the struggle, a pair of campus security guards appeared, rounding the corner at a run. They brushed past Webb, pounding after the thugs, who fled without a backward glance, the two helping the strung-out one. They burst through the rear door to the building, out into the bright sunshine of the afternoon, with the guards hot on their heels.

Despite the guards' intervention, Webb felt Bourne's desire to pursue the thugs run hot in his body. How quickly it had risen from its psychic sleep, how easily it had gained control of him. Was it because he wanted it to? Webb took a deep breath, gained a semblance of control and turned to face Rongsey Siv.

"Professor Webb!'' Rongsey tried to clear his throat. "I don't know---'' He seemed abruptly overcome. His large black eyes were wide behind the lenses of his glasses. His expression was, as usual, impassive, but in those eyes Webb could see all the fear in the world.

"It's okay now.'' Webb put his arm across Rongsey's shoulders. As always, his fondness for the Cambodian refugee was showing through his professorial reserve. He couldn't help it.

Rongsey had overcome great adversity---losing almost all his family in the war. Rongsey and Webb had been in the same Southeast Asian jungles, and try as he might, Webb could not fully remove himself from the tangle of that hot, humid world. Like a recurring fever, it never really left you. He felt a shiver of recognition, like a dream one has while awake.

"Loak soksapbaee chea tay?'' How are you? he asked in Khmer.

"I'm fine, Professor,'' Rongsey replied in the same language. "But I don't...I mean, how did you...?''

"Why don't we go outside?'' Webb suggested. He was now quite late for Barton's meeting, but he couldn't care less. He picked up the switchblade and the gun. As he checked the gun's mechanism, the firing pin broke. He threw the useless gun in a trash bin but pocketed the switchblade.

Around the corner, Rongsey helped him with the spill of term papers. They then walked in silence through the corridors, which became increasingly crowded as they neared the front of the building. Webb recognized the special nature of this silence, the dense weight of time returning to normal after an incident of shared violence. It was a wartime thing, a consequence of the jungle; odd and unsettling that it should happen on this teeming metropolitan campus.
Emerging from the corridor, they joined the swarm of students crowding through the front doors to Healy Hall. Just inside, in the center of the floor, gleamed the hallowed Georgetown University seal. A great majority of the students were walking around it because a school legend held that if you walked on the seal you'd never graduate. Rongsey was one of those who gave the seal a wide berth, but Webb strode right across it with no qualms whatsoever.

Outside, they stood in the buttery spring sunlight, facing the trees and the Old Quadrangle, breathing the air with its hint of budding flowers. At their backs rose the looming presence of Healy Hall with its imposing Georgian red-brick facade, nineteenth-century dormer windows, slate roof and central two-hundred-foot clock spire.

The Cambodian turned to Webb. "Professor, thank you. If you hadn't come....''

"Rongsey,'' Webb said gently, "do you want to talk about it?''

The student's eyes were dark, unreadable. "What's there to say?''

"I suppose that would depend on you.''

Rongsey shrugged. "I'll be fine, Professor Webb. Really. This isn't the first time I've been called names.''

Webb stood looking at Rongsey for a moment, and he was swept by sudden emotion that caused his eyes to sting. He wanted to take the boy in his arms, hold him close, promise him that nothing else bad would ever happen to him. But he knew that Rongsey's Buddhist training would not allow him to accept the gesture. Who could say what was going on beneath that fortress like exterior. Webb had seen many others like Rongsey, forced by the exigencies of war and cultural hatred to bear witness to death, the collapse of a civilization, the kinds of tragedies most Americans could not understand. He felt a powerful kinship with Rongsey, an emotional bond that was tinged with a terrible sadness, recognition of the wound inside him that could never truly be healed.

All this emotion stood between them, silently acknowledged perhaps but never articulated. With a small, almost sad smile, Rongsey formally thanked Webb again and they said their good-byes.

Webb stood alone amid the students and faculty hurrying by, and yet he knew that he wasn't truly alone. Despite his best efforts, the aggressive personality of Jason Bourne had once again asserted itself. He breathed slowly and deeply, concentrating hard, using the mental techniques his psychiatrist friend, Mo Panov, had taught him for pushing the Bourne identity down. He concentrated first on his surrounding, on the blue and gold colors of the spring afternoon, on the gray stone and red brick of the buildings around the quad, of the movement of the students, the smiling faces of the girls, the laughter of the boys, the earnest talk of the professors. He absorbed each element in its entirety, grounding himself in time and place. Then, and only then, did he turn his thoughts inward.

Years ago he had been working for the foreign service in Phnom Penh. He'd been married then, not to Marie, his current wife, but to a Thai woman named Dao. They had two children, Joshua and Alyssa, and lived in a house on the bank of the river. America was at war with North Vietnam, but the war had spilled over into Cambodia. One afternoon, while he was at work and his family had been swimming in the river, a plane had strafed them, killing them.

Webb had almost gone mad with grief. Finally, fleeing his house and Phnom Penh, he'd arrived in Saigon, a man with no past and no future. It had been Alex Conklin who had taken a heartsick, half-mad David Webb off the streets of Saigon and forged him into a first-rate clandestine operative. In Saigon, Webb had learned to kill, had turned his own self-hatred outward, inflicting his rage on others. When a member of Conklin's group---an evil- tempered drifter named Jason Bourne---had been discovered to be a spy, it was Webb who had executed him. Webb had come to loathe the Bourne identity, but the truth was that it had often been his lifeline. Jason Bourne had saved Webb's life more times than he could remember. An amusing thought if it hadn't been so literal.

Years later, when they had both returned to Washington, Conklin had given him a long-term assignment. He had become what amounted to a sleeper agent, taking the name of Jason Bourne, a man long dead, forgotten by everyone. For three years Webb was Bourne, turned himself into an international assassin of great repute in order to hunt down an elusive terrorist.
But in Marseilles, his mission had gone terribly wrong. He'd been shot, cast into the dark waters of the Mediterranean, thought dead. Instead, he had been pulled from the water by members of a fishing boat, nursed back to health by a drunkard doctor in the port they'd set him down in. The only problem was that in the shock of almost dying he'd lost his memory.
What had come slowly back were the Bourne memories. It was only much later, with the help of Marie, his wife-to-be, that he had come to realize the truth, that he was David Webb. But by that time the Jason Bourne personality was too well ingrained, too powerful, too cunning to die.

In the aftermath, he'd become two people: David Webb, linguistics professor with a new wife and, eventually, two children, and Jason Bourne, the agent trained by Alex Conklin to be a formidable spy. Occasionally, in some crisis, Conklin called on Bourne's expertise and Webb reluctantly rose to duty. But the truth was that Webb often had little control over his Bourne personality. What had just happened with Rongsey and the three street thugs was evidence enough. Bourne had a way of asserting himself that was beyond Webb's control, despite all the work he and Panov had done.

Khan, having watched David Webb and the Cambodian student talking from across the quad, ducked into a building diagonally across from Healy Hall, mounted the stairs to the third floor. Khan was dressed much like all the other students. He looked younger than his twenty-seven years and no one gave him a second look. He was wearing khakis and a jeans jacket, over which was slung an outsize backpack. His sneakers made no sound as he went down the hallway, past the doors to classrooms. In his mind's eye was a clear picture of the view across the quad. He was again calculating angles, taking into account the mature trees that might obscure his view of his intended target.

He paused in front of the sixth door, heard a professor's voice from inside. The talk about ethics brought an ironic smile to his face. In his experience---and it was great and varied---ethics was as dead and useless as Latin. He went on to the next classroom, which he had already determined was empty, and went in.

Quickly now, he shut and locked the door behind him, crossed to the line of windows overlooking the quad, opened one, and got to work. From his backpack, he removed a 7.62-mm SVD Dragunov sniper rifle with a collapsible stock. He fitted the optical sight onto it, leaned it on the sill. Peering through the sight, he found David Webb, by this time standing alone across the quad in front of Healy Hall. There were trees just to his left. Every once in a while, a passing student would obscure him. Khan took a deep breath, let it out slowly. He sighted on Webb's head.


Copyright 2004 by the Estate of Robert Ludlum

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Jason Bourne is known and feared in the deadly world of covert-ops as one of the most highly skilled assassins for hire. Bourne, however, was merely an identity assumed by CIA agent David Webb, a personality implanted by the CIA to facilitate a dangerous operation, but one that threatened to subsume David Webb entirely. Years after the events of The Bourne Identity, Webb is no longer an active CIA agent and is now a professor of Eastern Studies at Georgetown University, living a quiet life, far from the dangers of his previous life. Until one day he finds himself the target of an assassin nearly as skilled as himself and is framed for the brutal murder of his two closest associates and friends. As he fights for his life against unseen assailants, as well as the full resources of the CIA, who believe he has gone dangerously rogue, the Bourne identity asserts itself, leaving Jason Bourne in control. Now Bourne must use all his skills to stay alive as he battles against a determined assassin, the combined skills of the world's intelligence networks, and a shadowy figure in the background, skillfully manipulating events and people, in a far deadlier and more dangerous game than any of them realize.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Brick seems completely comfortable sitting in the narrator's seat of Lustbader's (Black Heart, etc.) substantial espionage thriller, which brings Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne back for a fourth outing. Bourne's peaceful life as a family man and teacher of Eastern studies at Georgetown University is brutally interrupted by a sudden sniper attack and the double murder of his two best friends. Framed for the killings, Bourne is forced back into the violent world he had hoped never to revisit. What follows is a roller coaster ride of intrigue and betrayal that will take Bourne halfway around the world in an effort to clear his name. Along the way, he uncovers a deadly plot against an upcoming summit on terrorism. Brick handles the large cast and international settings with ease, keeping his foreign accents on the light side. Even when the writing strays toward the melodramatic, Brick maintains his straightforward reading style. While some transitions happen so quickly that listeners may be confused as to where they are and who is speaking, Brick knows how to keep the action moving and the characters grounded and real. Simultaneous release with the St. Martin's hardcover (Forecasts, June 7). (June) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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