The Bourne Supremacy

The Bourne Supremacy by Robert Ludlum

Remember when you were a kid in school and you would lean back on the back two legs of your chair, and you would ALMOST fall down, but you’d CATCH yourself at the last second?  Remember how you felt during that second?  That’s about how Jason Bourne must feel for the entire 650 pages of this book.  Talk about non-stop action.  How this guy can survive all of this constant turmoil is beyond me.

When we met Bourne in the first novel, The Bourne Identity, we pieced a bit of his history together.  Apparently, he was a good-guy killer used by the U.S. Government.  The problem was, he didn’t know who he was at the beginning of that story since he was suffering from  amnesia.  As that story unraveled, we found out that he was really a man named David Webb, but he took on this alter identity after suffering the horrors of Vietnam and witnessing his young family become slaughtered.  So the government uses him for their dirty deeds in the world of foreign espionage.  He’s real good at that sort of thing.

As this story opens, the government needs him again, but he’s “retired” living with his wife (the one he kidnapped in the first book).  They need him because there’s a “counterfeit” Jason Bourne knocking off people in Asia, and the government pieces together that the Chinese government is trying to sabotage the forthcoming handover of Hong Kong from the British Government (this event actually took place in 1997 - about a decade after this book was written).  The only way the government can get the real Bourne to act out his mission, is by kidnapping his wife.  So the rules are simple - find the counterfeit Bourne, do away with him, and you can have your wife back.

So the pissed off real Bourne (really David Webb, remember) is back in action.  I should probably capitalize the word “action”.  Holy cats.  Every time Bourne turns around there’s an explosion, a kidnapping, someone being tortured, someone being raped, et cetera, et cetera.  Such scenes usually work better in a film as opposed to a book, but Robert Ludlum knows how to make scenes like this work on the printed pages.  That’s not to say this book is necessarily easy to follow.  Although the main story is simple enough to keep you from getting lost, I confess that I got very confused many times during the smaller scenes within the story.  Maybe there were too many characters with too many identities, or maybe it’s just Ludlum is very “thick” with his writing.  I kept asking myself things such as: “How did he know there would be an assassination attempt?”, “Why did he garrote  that guy in the alley?”, and “Why, exactly did Mao’s tomb blow up?”.  After awhile, I simply gave up and just accepted that Bourne knew what he was doing, and I shouldn’t try to keep up with his thoughts and actions.

Tons of action isn’t necessarily a great thing.  Although it was overall enjoyable, there were times when I wish that Bourne would stop and take, you know, a nap or something.  Unlike James Bond, this guy has no time to enjoy a drink, a game at the casino, or the company of a gorgeous woman.  I felt exhausted at times just reading about how Bourne felt after going (what seemed like) days without any sleep.

As much as I enjoyed the book, I thought it was a bit too long.  As I mentioned, the book is about 650 pages in length, yet these are also dense pages - with small print etc.  After I finished about 500 pages, I was more concerned with how soon I could finish the thing than I was about the outcome of the story.  Never a good thing.  I think there’s one more “original” Bourne.  I’m sure I’ll get to it one of these days, but I’m definitely not in a rush.  I need to rest awhile.