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Dear Mr. Ludlum, I have been guilty of this in the past, but now Amazon has given me the opportunity to publicly offer an apology. You undoubtably have spent decades refining your craft, and I would imagine that months/years of effort go into each book. So why the apology? I read your most recent book within 24 hours of purchasing it. It seems a tad disrespectful to consume that much talent in so brief a time. The story is outstanding, and can be read by those who did not read the first installment, although I would reccomend that they do read the first "Matarese". Your book does lack the following, endorsements/pleas from other authors or periodicals beseeching others to buy a book. A recent book was accompanied by, "please purchase this book as a favor to me", the arrogance! And this plea was from a regular on the New York Times Best-Seller List. Your books need only your name on the cover, and perhaps a title. Your competition/wanna-bees fall "like the fireflys in a heavy rain" as you suggested in your book. Great Metaphor! Wonderful book, may you write dozens more! Francis McInerney

I bought the book-on-tape of The Matarese Countdown and have been listening to it in my car for the past few days. Big mistake. The dialogue in TMCis so hilariously awful -unintended, I'm sure, by the author and the actor who's reading the book to us -- that I'm laughing too hard to steer the car and see the road. Every German character sounds like Colonel Klink; every Swedish character sounds like the Swedish Chef; you get the picture. All of this comes at you in a pulsing staccato reminiscent of the urgent voiceovers on 50's newsreels. I see from other reviews that much of the dialogue in TMC is punctuated with !, which may explain the breathless narrative. Reading this book couldn't be any better than listening to it, so I recommend that you give it a miss.

I've read almost every book Ludlum has written and this was by far the worse. In fact, I found it written so poorly, that I have a hard time believing he actually wrote it. The characters were two-dimensional and the dialog was cheesy. Put the story into an outline, and it's great... but whoever developed this outline into a novel did a poor job. If you're a Ludlum lover, stay away from this book.