Vietnam, and the Watergate conspiracy have puzzled Americans. Most persons refused to believe that these situations were the result of mere chance, accident, bad luck, long-term historical trends, or abstract forces. Instead, they were seen as the result of conscious human actions inspired by alien ideologies, immoral ambitions, superhuman greed, or fanatic commitments. In the bureaucratic world of the mid-and late twentieth century, the antagonist was not merely a single individual but a group of dedicated fanatics, acting together, secretly, with unlimited goals and demands aiming toward total power. Ludlum understood these fears: “We’re living in a time when you can’t take things at face value anymore. This is no longer the age of Aquarius—it’s the age of conspiracy.” To that insight he added fast-paced writing, complex plots, exotic locations, and considerable violence. His books became international best sellers.

Trevayne, The Cry of the Halidon, and The Road to Gandolfo

After the success of his first three novels, Ludlum, for some unexplained reason, published two novels, Trevayne (1973) and The Cry of the Halidon (1974), under the pseudonym Jonathan Ryder, a variation on one of his wife’s acting names. Both novels concerned conspiracies engendered by international finance, and both were set on the exotic Caribbean island of Jamaica. In an interesting if not entirely successful change of pace, during that same period he also published The Road to Gandolfo (1975), under the pseudonym Michael Shepherd, in which he seems to be spoofing his own work, or at least his chosen genre. The plot revolves around the kidnapping of a pope by a military figure aiming at financial and political power, but the typical Ludlum theme is handled humorously and satirically. Under his own name, Ludlum always presents his conspiracies with great seriousness: “I take my work very seriously, and I generally write about something that outrages me as a man.”

The Gemini Contenders

The Gemini Contenders (1976) was one of Ludlum’s most ambitious and successful novels. The story begins in the early days of World War II but only secondarily concerns one of his perennial bêtes noires, German fascism. The plot progresses to the waning days of the Vietnam War, but one of the most significant events in the novel occurred almost two thousand years before. No other Ludlum novel has covered so many centuries. Less unusually but still impressively, the story travels around the globe, from its beginnings in Greece and Italy, to England, to the United States—Washington, New England, and New York City—to Vietnam, and back to Europe. As is usual in Ludlum’s books, the background detail adds considerably to the veracity of the plot, but the geographical and historical information never detracts from the story line and the dynamic energy of the writing. Ludlum has observed, “As Shaw once said, if you want to convince somebody, entertain him. That’s what I try to do. In the theater you can’t bore people. They’ll walk out.” Ludlum rarely bores the reader.

Ludlum generally begins his novels with the hypothetical question “What if?” In The Chancellor Manuscript (1977), the author asks what if J. Edgar Hoover had been assassinated instead of dying of natural causes? In The Gemini Contenders, Ludlum poses to the reader the possibility that a long-secret, first century c.e. document concerning the origins of Christianity exists. For many centuries the document has been kept in total secrecy by a fanatical order of Greek monks, but in the early days of World War II it was deemed too dangerous for it to remain in its traditional place of hiding. In the event of a Nazi invasion of Greece, the document might be discovered and then used by the German government to create religious differences within the Christian community and thus weaken the allied cause, facilitating Adolf Hitler’s dream of establishing his Third Reich for a thousand years.

As usual in Ludlum’s plots, the story’s resolution involves a secret and corrupt conspiracy that entangles the hero; in The Gemini Contenders, however, the heroes are twin brothers, grandsons of the only man who knew the hiding place of the secret document. One twin, Andrew, is a professional soldier and a war hero in Vietnam; the other, Adrian, more reflective, has become a lawyer. Like Cain and Abel, the brothers become antagonists. Both, however, are committed to rooting out corruption—Andrew in the military, Adrian in government and business. Ludlum has claimed, “I have one true loathing—for fanatics of all persuasions, right or left,” and in his desire to cleanse the military, Andrew has become a fanatic. He and several of his comrades have formed a secret organization known as Eye Corps. It is a typical example of one of Ludlum’s conspiracies: Secret and elitist, it follows its own rules, and regardless of its initial beneficial goals, it has become seduced by the vision of power and aims at taking over the United States Defense Department and, in effect, the country itself. In The Chancellor Manuscript, the secret elite group dedicated to preservation and betterment of the country is a small cadre of elder statesmen known as Inver Brass. In time, individual members of the secret organization also turn from the light to the darkness. Ludlum is consistent throughout his novels in portraying the corrupting effects of power, and secret power is the most dangerous.

In most Ludlum stories, issues and confrontations are resolved only through violence, and The Gemini Contenders is no different. When accused of glamorizing mayhem, Ludlum responds to his critics: “Have they read Sophocles? What about Aeschylus? C’mon, this century has not exactly been all roses. I use violence because it is realistic to my plots, but I do not romanticize it.” Ludlum’s use and description of violence has not only furthered his plots but has also undoubtedly contributed to his great popularity. By the time of the final battle between Andrew and Adrian, literally scores of characters—men, women, and children, the young and the old—have been most graphically maimed and murdered. Ludlum describes Andrew’s death in the following manner:The soldier’s hand was in the grave. He whipped it out. In his grip was a rope; he lurched off the ground, swinging the rope violently. Tied to the end was a grappling hook, its three prongs slashing through the air. Adrian sprang to his left, firing the enormous weapon at the crazed killer from Eye Corps. The soldier’s chest exploded. The rope, held in a grip of steel, swung in a circle—the grappling hook spinning like an insanely off-course gyroscope—around the soldier’s head. The body shot forward, over the sheet of rock, and plummeted down, its scream echoing, filling the mountains with its pitch of horror. With a sudden, sickening vibration the rope sprang taut, quivering in the thin layer of disturbed snow. . . . . . . He [Adrian] limped to the edge of the plateau and looked over the sheet of rock. Suspended below was the soldier’s body, the grappling hook imbedded in his neck. A prong had been plunged up through Andrew’s throat, its point protruding from the gaping mouth.

Thus Ludlum’s originally unwilling and unwitting individual triumphs over fanatics and conspiracies; Abel/Adrian kills Cain/Andrew. However, in Ludlum’s novels, the triumph is not necessarily permanent or clear-cut. At the end of The Gemini Contenders, Adrian has finally discovered the message of the secret document, the message that could threaten the world’s stability: It was not Christ who died on the cross but an impostor, and Christ himself committed suicide three days after the Crucifixion. The novel ends with Adrian neither releasing the document to the public nor permanently ensuring its secrecy by destroying it; he decides instead to keep it secret for the present, bearing the burdens of it himself, an existential act that perhaps represents Ludlum’s ideal human quality.

The Bourne Trilogy

In the second decade of his prolific writing career, Ludlum began to carry characters from one book to the next. Jason Bourne, the American suffering from amnesia in The Bourne Identity (1980) , was brought back for further conspiratorial adventures in both The Bourne Supremacy (1986) and The Bourne Ultimatum (1990). The secret group Inver Brass, introduced in The Chancellor Manuscript, reappeared in The Icarus Agenda (1988), Sam and the Hawk, from Ludlum’s satirical The Road to Gandolfo (written under the Shepherd pseudonym and republished in 1982 under Ludlum’s name) were revisited in the similarly humorous The Road to Omaha (1992), while rowdy Brandon Scofield from The Matarese Circle (1979) returned in The Matarese Countdown (1997) to once again battle maniacal Matarese members intent on dominating the world.

The Covert-One Series

After five more bestsellers in the 1990’s, Ludlum decided to try something different—a paperback original, The Hades Factor (2000), as the first in a series called Covert-One, similar to Tom Clancy’s hugely popular OpCenter and Net Force books. Cowritten with Gayle Lynds, the thriller followed Ludlum’s usual tenets of terrorism and conspiracy, this time involving biological warfare.

The Sigma Protocol

Ludlum’s last novel, The Sigma Protocol (2001), was widely considered one of his finest. As its release was nearly coincident with his death, the work probably was authored by Ludlum himself. His publisher, St. Martin’s, let it be known at the time that there were a number of unpublished manuscripts, but it is doubtful that these were anywhere near ready for publication. Ghostwriters were certainly employed to finish the incomplete works, and it is speculated that much that has been published under Ludlum’s name has been written entirely by other hands.

Ludlum’s characters and plots also gained wider exposure through film adaptations: The Scarlatti Inheritance, The Osterman Weekend, and The Holcroft Covenant (1978) were made into major motion pictures and later released on video; The Rhinemann Exchange (1974), The Bourne Identity, and The Apocalypse Watch (1995) were transformed into television miniseries. Though critics greeted the films in much the same way reviewers did the books—lamenting the overwrought plots filled to capacity with ultraviolence—audiences were willing to overlook contrivance for a chance to see a Ludlum adventure on celluloid. In 2002 Ludlum’s film reputation improved with the release of The Bourne Identity starring Matt Damon as Jason Bourne.