2013: Inferno by Dan Brown

The Author:

Dan Brown (1964-    ) was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, where his father worked as a professor of mathematics.  Brown went on to study at Philips Exeter and later Amherst, from which he received his B.A. in 1986.  He moved out to Hollywood to pursue a career in music.  He released a few albums by 1994.  In 1993, he moved back to New Hampshire with Blythe Newlon, whom he married, and taught English at Philips Exeter.  He and his wife co-wrote his first book: 187 Men to Avoid: A Survival Guide for the Romantically Frustrated Woman.  Brown was credited under the pseudonym Danielle Brown. He quit teaching to work full time in 1996 and published his first novel,Digital Fortress, in 1998.  Angels & Demons (2000) was his first novel starring Robert Langdon.  His fourth novel, The Da Vinci Code (2003) was the bestselling novel of the year it was published and the following year.  His next two novels, The Lost Symbol (2009) and Inferno (2013) were the bestselling novels in the year they were published.

The Book:

Length: 611 pages
Subject/Genre: Conspiracy/Conspiracy theory

Inferno starts with Robert Langdon waking up in a hospital room in Florence, a bullet wound having caused some short term amnesia.  Except all but one of those things turns out to be a lie.  Robert Langdon has to find out what he was working on that almost got him killed, why he's in Italy, and what's happened over the last couple days, with the help of genius doctor/actor/polyglot/prodigy Sienna Brooks. All he has are dreams of a woman predicting doom and an altered version of Botticelli's Mappa dell Inferno.

There's a lot of withholding information going on, often to absolutely no result.  For a long time, everyone avoids naming the bad guy, which would make sense if the bad guy were a character we knew of.  Even characters who have no reason to avoid using his name awkwardly avoid using it until Langdon figures it out.  Likewise, there's plenty that is so blatantly obvious that when the 'secret' is revealed, the only possible response is a resounding, "Yeah, I got that two hundred pages ago." To top it off, there are so many twists we just end up with a story that is convoluted.  After the fourth time you say, "All along you assumed it was X, but really it was Y!", I'll stop assuming X is X and I won't be surprised when it turns out to be Y (again).

To be fair though, Inferno was a step up from The Lost Symbol.  Since Brown wasn't dealing with a secret society (real or imagined), he stuck closer to facts.  A mad scientist obsessed Dante uses clues based on The Divine Comedy, rather than finding some secret code Dante hid in his own poetry.  Brown also starts to shy away from calling Langdon a symbologist, only using the phrase a couple times, at one point even referring to Langdon as "an art historian who specialized in iconography."  While this may seem like a trivial point, imagine if Indiana Jones went around calling himself a Treasurologist.  It just makes the character sound stupid.

Don't get me wrong, I still don't recommend Inferno.  The plot is convoluted, the characters are boring, many characters do things solely to advance the plot, etc.  It's far more tolerable than any of his earlier books, but you won't miss anything by skipping it.

Bestsellers of 2013:

Publishers Weekly's list for 2013 is separated by format, includes fiction and non-fiction, and no hard numbers.  Since Inferno was #2 on one list and #1 on the other, while Hard Luck was #1 on one list, and didn't appear on the other at all, I went with Inferno.

Print:

1. Hard Luck by Jeff Kinney
2. Inferno by Dan Brown
3. Killing Jesus by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard (non-fiction)
4. Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander (non-fiction *cough* bull shit *cough)
5. The House of Hades by Rick Riordan
6. Divergent by Veronica Roth
7. Jesus Calling by Sarah Young (non-fiction)
8. Sycamore Row by John Grisham
9. The Third Wheel by Jeff Kinney
10. Happy, Happy, Happy by Phil Robertson (non-fiction)

Kindle top 10:

1. Inferno by Dan Brown
2. Divergent by Veronica Roth
3. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
4. Sycamore Row by John Grisham
5. The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty
6. Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks
7. Allegiant by Veronica Roth
8. Insurgent by Veronica Roth
9. The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (pseud. for J.K. Rowling)
10. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Also Published in 2013:

MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
The Circle by Dave Eggers
Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon
Tenth of December by George Saunders
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

2010: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson

The Author:

Karl Stig-Erland Larsson (1954-2004), better known as Stieg Larsson, was born in Västerbotten, Sweden, where he lived with his grandparents.  As a teenager, he began editing science fiction fanzines.  In 1977, he moved to Stockholm, where he continued his involvement with the SF community, while working for a news agency.  He joined the Communist Workers League and was known for his journalism and activism exposing white-supremacist and totalitarian groups.  He founded the Expo-foundation, which researched right-wing extremist groups and published exposés of their findings, which led to a steady stream of death threats.  He co-wrote four non-fiction books, Extremhögern (The Extreme Right) (1991), with Anna-Lena Lodenius; Sverigedemokraterna: Den nationaella rörelsen (Sweden Democrats: The National Movement) (2001), with Mikael Ekman; Sverigedemokraterna från insidan: Berättelsen om Sveriges största parti utanför riksdagen (Sweden Democrats from the inside: The Story of Sweden's Largest Party Outside Parliament) (2004), with Maria Blomquist and David Lagerlöf; and Debatten om hedersmord: Feminism eller rasism (Debate on Honor Killings: Feminism or Racism) (2004), with Cecilia Englund.  (N.B.: Title translations are done through google translate, so no guarantee on accuracy.)

Larsson started writing fiction as a hobby in 2001, and was partway through his third novel when he approached a publisher.  Larsson died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 2004, before any of his novels were published.  The first novel, Män som hatar kvinnor (Men Who Hate Women) (2005) was translated to English by Reg Keeland and retitled The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2008).  His second novel Flickan som lekte med elden (The Girl Who Played with Fire) was published in Swedish in 2006 and English in 2008.  His last complete novel, Luftslottet som sprängdes (The Aircastle that Blew Up) was published in 2007 and translated into English 2010.  

The Book:

1st American edition/
Cover Design-Peter Mendelsund

Length: 563 pages
Subject/Genre: Conspiracy/Suspense thriller


The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is the third and final book of Larsson's Millennium Trilogy. (Yes, I read the first two before writing this review.)  If you want to read the trilogy, and haven't read the first two books, stop reading now to avoid spoilers.

Mikael Blomkvist is an investigative reporter for Millennium, a small monthly magazine specializing in investigative reporting of the financial world.  He's tricked into publishing a story he can't prove about the corrupt financier Wennerstrom and is convicted of libel, destroying his credibility.  He's then hired by Henrik Vanger to investigate the disappearance of his favorite granddaughter decades earlier in a classic locked-room (or, rather, island) mystery.  Blomkvist eventually makes contact with Lisbeth Salander, who had been tasked with investigating his background by Vanger.  Salander is an incredibly intelligent but introverted hacker who, despite being in her 20s, is a ward of the state for mental deficiency.  Her guardian and surrogate father has a stroke, and her new guardian, Bjurman, sexually abuses her.  Salander gathers proof of this abuse, and tortures/tattoos Bjurman in revenge, blackmailing him with the evidence.  Anyway, Salander and Blomkvist solve the mystery, Salander falls for Blomkvist but realizes she can't have him.  They find evidence to prove Wennerstrom's guilt, and Salander steals millions of dollars of Wennerstrom's dirty money before running off.  End book one.

In The Girl Who Played with Fire, we start to get some back story on Salander.  After the Millennium launches an investigation into sex trafficking, the reporter and his fiance are murdered and Lisbeth is the prime suspect.  The gun used in the murder has Salander's fingerprints on it and was used to kill Bjurman.  Bjurman had previously reached out to an unknown entity to destroy Salander.  This unknown entity is a man named Zalachenko, Lisbeth's father.  Zalachenko was a prominent Soviet spy who defected to Sweden in the 80s.  To keep his identity secret, a small special unit was formed within the Swedish security police (SAPO) known only as "The Section".  There duties involved covering up any crimes Zalachenko committed, including his consistently beating Lisbeth's mother.  Unable to find help from the police, a twelve year old Lisbeth attacked Zalachenko by throwing a molotov cocktail in his car.  To keep her quiet, she was locked up in a psychiatric ward and declared incompetent.  This novel focuses on the investigation of the murders and the sex trafficking trade.  Salander becomes public enemy number one, and has only limited contact with Blomkvist.  The murders, we discover, were committed by Salander's half-brother, Niedermann.  Zalachenko shoots Salander in the head with a .22, but she survives and nearly kills Zalachenko.  The novel ends with Niedermann subdued and Blomkvist finding Salander, who's in bad shape but conscious.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest deals with the fallout from the previous novel.  Salander and Zalachenko are both recuperating in the same hospital, and plotting to kill each other.  "The Section" is desperate to cover up evidence of it's existence and wrongdoings.  Blomkvist begins investigations into the Section.

Honestly, this was a well-plotted mystery/thriller.  Except for the slowness at the beginning of the first novel, the whole series was solid.  The characters manage to play to a type without being caricatures.  It can be a bit preachy every now and then, but it's infrequent.

There hasn't been much Swedish lit on the US bestseller lists, and the Millennium trilogy is an interesting specimen, if only because so much of the series is not super Swedish.  Much of the first novel could just as easily have taken place off the coast of New England and the latter two could replace SAPO with MI5/6.  There are definitely aspects of Swedish culture and history that are addressed, but since the novel fits into the mystery/thriller genre so well, those aspects just form part of the background.

Like I said, we don't see much Swedish pop fic in the US,  but that's changed a bit, in no small part due to Larsson himself.  The genre known as Scandinavian Noir or Nordic Crime has been growing in popularity over the past several years, with Jo Nesbø being one of the best known.  It's an interesting case of a genre crossing national borders and language barriers.

Of course, a series this popular has made its appearance on the big screen.

All three novels of the Millenium trilogy were adapted to film in Sweden in 2009.

The series stars Noomi Rapace (Prometheus) as Lisbeth Salander and Michael Nyqvist (John Wick, Europa Report) as Mikael Blomkvist.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was adapted to film again in 2011, starring Daniel Craig (Casino Royale, Skyfall) as Mikael Blomkvist and Rooney Mara (The Social Network, Her) as Lisbeth Salander, and directed by David Fincher (Fight Club, The Social Network).

As a whole the Millenium trilogy is an above-average crime thriller, definitely worth a read unless you can't stand crime thrillers.


Bestsellers of 2010:

1. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson
2. The Confession by John Grisham
3. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
4. Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks
5. Dead or Alive by Tom Clancy
6. Sizzling Sixteen by Janet Evanovich
7. Cross Fire by James Patterson
8. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
9. Port Mortuary by Partricia Cornwell
10. Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

Also Published in 2010:

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis
The Thousand Augusts of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

Sources:

"Stieg Larsson." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2012. Literature Resource Center. Web.

1988: The Cardinal of the Kremlin by Tom Clancy

The Author:

Tom Clancy (1947-2013) was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland.  He attended Loyola College.  While there, Clancy joined the ROTC, but was unable to serve due to poor eyesight.  He graduated in 1969, and married Wanda Thomas King, with whom he had four children.  Throughout the 1970s, he worked as an insurance agent, eventually buying a small firm from his wife's grandfather.  A military history buff, Clancy began writing a novel, The Hunt for Red October, which was published by the Naval Institute Press in 1984, to unexpected commercial success.  His second novel, Red Storm Rising (1986), and his third novel, Patriot Games (1987) were the second-bestselling novels of their years of release.  His fourth and fifth novels, The Cardinal of the Kremlin and Clear and Present Danger, respectively, took the number one spot.  

Since then, Clancy has written or co-written fourteen novels, ten of which have ended up on the annual top ten list.  He has also written or co-written thirteen books of non-fiction.  As well as creating series bearing his name, written by other authors.

Clancy and his wife separated in 1996, divorcing in 1999.  Later in 1999, he married Alexandra Marie Llewellyn, whit whom he had one daughter. Clancy died at Johns Hopkins in 2013.

The Book:

1st Edition Cover

Length: 543 pages
Subject/Genre: Cold War Espionage/Military Thriller

The Cardinal of the Kremlin takes place during the Cold War, as the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. both try to develop laser-based missile defense systems, the success of which would change the balance of power in regards nuclear or ICBM warfare.  Meanwhile, the USSR has invaded Afghanistan, and the CIA is funding a group of Mujaheddin, led by a former teacher known as The Archer.   The CIA supplies weapons in return for information taken from Soviet planes and camps.  

The main body of the narrative details the cat and mouse game between Soviet and U.S. intelligence, especially as regards Colonel Filitov, a high ranking Soviet war hero who has been feeding information to the U.S. for decades under the codename Cardinal (hence the title). Along with lengthy descriptions of the nature and consequence of the defense projects, Clancy spends a lot of time detailing methods of spycraft and political maneuvering.  

In the U.S., the intelligence community, including Clancy's recurring characters Jack Ryan and Mr. Clark, is set into action when Filitov's identity is compromised.  And on the other side of the iron curtain, Gerasimov, the head of the KGB with dreams of ruling the USSR, is trying to consolidate power.

The technology and the procedures of the nations' military and intelligence agencies take priority in the novel, the characters mainly only important in regards to the type of people they represent, and how those people fit into the aforementioned agencies.  The descriptions of military equipment or spycraft techniques are often digressive, but not too much so.  Clancy's understanding of how much information is too much is better than Michener's or Auel's.  Whereas the latter two would (and have) spent pages discussing the nature of the dirt the characters are standing on, Clancy might write just a paragraph, and only then to discuss how it affects the tactical strategy of the terrain.   When reading Michener or Auel, it always seems like what they really wanted to do was write a textbook, and while Clancy does occasionally get like this, it happens far less often.

Overall, though, The Cardinal of the Kremlin is a lot like a high-tech chess match.  Each side is trying to think several moves ahead, but plans constantly shift with the circumstances.  Like a chess match, there are dull moments, the players stopping to fortify their positions, or regroup, and some quite exciting moments when pieces get taken off the board in rapid succession.  But, since I've already set up a chess metaphor and might as well drive it into the ground, unlike chess,  not everything is black and white.

Clancy's novel is a product not only of the cold war, but of the last years of the cold war.  A shift from offensive to defensive warfare, the decreasing power of the KGB, and a power struggle between Western friendly and nationalist government leaders are all important trends throughout the book.  Like le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, the Soviet officials aren't depicted in the typical red menace villain formula.  Some are ideologues, some are honestly interested in improving the lives of the soviet people, some are power hungry.  Unlike le Carré, Clancy doesn't really give the same treatment to the U.S. intelligence officials, the worst of whom are depicted as misinformed but with good intentions.  (If I had to choose one, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is the superior novel.)

Clancy's novel is interesting for another, unintentional reason: historical irony.  Typically, historical irony refers is a specific type of situational irony, that specifically requires the passage of time.  For example, the U.S. supplying the Mujaheddin with weapons to fight our mutual enemy, only for those weapons to be used against the U.S.  Although a form of situational irony, I would argue that it also functions as a form of dramatic irony (the former indicates only that the situation is ironic, whereas the latter refers to how one reads a text with knowledge the characters don't have).  Clancy portrays the Mujaheddin as noble freedom fighters protecting their country from enemy invaders.  That the Mujaheddin developed into the Taliban is something that Clancy couldn't have known, and unintentionally provides the counter-balance between U.S. and Soviet tactics in the close days of the Cold War.

The Cardinal of the Kremlin's legacy is less prestigious than other Clancy novels.  No movie was made, but it is the first book on my list to get a video game adaptation.  It was a resource management game released for the Amiga in 1990.

Title Screen

The Cardinal of the Kremlin was an entertaining read.  If you're interested in military/spy thrillers, well, you've probably already read a bunch of Clancy, but if you haven't give this one a look.  If it's not a genre you enjoy, you probably won't like this one (although I do recommend The Spy Who Came in from the Cold).

Bestsellers of 1988:

1. The Cardinal of the Kremlin by Tom Clancy

2. The Sands of Time by Sidney Sheldon

3. Zoya by Danielle Steele

4. The Icarus Agenda by Robert Ludlum

5. Alaska by James Michener

6. Till We Meet Again by Judith Krantz

7. The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice

8. To Be the Best by Barbara Taylor Bradford

9. One by Richard Bach

10. Mitla Pass by Leon Uris

Also Published in 1988:

The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker

The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo 

Matilda by Roald Dahl

Libra by Don DeLillo

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

Sources:

Clancy, Tom. The Cardinal of the Kremlin. New York: Putnam, 1988. Print.

"The Cardinal of the Kremlin." VideoGameGeek. BoardGameGeek, LLC. Web.

"Tom Clancy." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2014. Literature Resource 
     Center. Web. 

1981: Noble House by James Clavell

The Author:

James Clavell (1921-1994) was born Charles Edmund Dumaresq Clavell.  Clavell was born in Australia, the son of a British Navy officer.  In 1940, Clavell joined the Royal Artillery and fought in the Pacific theatre of World War Two.  He was captured by Japanese forces in Malaysia, and taken to Changi prison in Singapore where he was held for over three years. The Changi POW camp was notorious for its inhumane treatment of prisoners.  Of the 150,000 people interred, only 10,000 survived.  He left military service in 1946 and attended the University of Birmingham for two years.  He married April Stride in 1951, with whom he had two children.  In 1953, Clavell moved to the United States (he became a naturalized citizen in 1963).  

In the U.S., Clavell began a career in screenwriting.  He wrote the screenplay for the sci-fi classic The Fly (1958), co-wrote The Great Escape (1963) and wrote and directed the Sidney Poitier film To Sir, with Love (1967).

During a screenwriters strike, Clavell began working on his first novel, King Rat, a fictionalized version of his experiences in Changi.  The novel was published in 1962.  This was the first of what would later be named the Asian Saga, a series of six books that make up the majority of Clavell's oeuvre. The second book in the series, Tai-Pan (1966) placed eighth on that year's annual bestseller list.  The third, Shogun (1975), placed ninth.  Noble House is the only one to take the top spot.  The fifth, Whirlwind (1986), placed third and the last, Gai-Jin (1993) did not appear on the list at all.  Clavell passed away in 1994 due to complications from cancer while in Switzerland.



The Book:

Length: 1370 pages
Subject/Genre: Hong Kong/Business Thriller

Excluding a prologue, Noble House takes place over the course of ten days, from August 18th, 1963 through August 27th.  The main plot of the novel is the ongoing battle between the two major trading companies in Hong Kong, Struan's, now led by the novel's protagonist, Ian Dunross, and their rival Rothwell-Gornt, led by Quillian Gornt.  Both sides play dirty, complex games as they try to outdo each other and at the same time win the alliance of Par-Con industries, and American company looking to become international.  While all this is going on, easily over a dozen subplots occur, covering everything from opium smuggling, romantic troubles, and Soviet conspiracies.  

In Noble House, Clavell tries to capture the economic free-for-all of Hong Kong in the 1960s, as well as to explain the psyche of its residents.  The depiction of Hong Kong natives and their ideology is interesting.  It would be easy to just write it off a stereotypical, but at the same time it may be an accurate representation of the view an outsider would have in Hong Kong society, a society with a very different set of cultural norms than ours.    

Politically, the novel is very focused on economics, and takes a 'red under every bed' approach.  In the context of the beginning of the 1980s, and the economic policies of Reagan and Thatcher, this may reflect the views of Western audiences of the time.  Ian Dunross is the individualist hero who succeeds in business by virtue of his own cunning and bravery which, within the context of the novel, I think it may be a little disingenuous, considering how often he is saved by luck or circumstances beyond his control.  

As a business thriller, for lack of a better term, Noble House is an engrossing but slow read.  Clavell has a habit of delivering important information in an offhand manner, often as one sentence in the middle of a long paragraph, that can easily be missed if you tend to skim.

Shogun remains the most famous and best-reviewed of the Asian Saga (it had a TV miniseries/movie in 1980 and one currently in pre-production).  King Rat and Tai-Pan were given film adaptations in 1965 and 1986 respectively. In 1988, Noble House was adapted as a four part miniseries starring Pierce Brosnan.

Noble House is a mixture of business, espionage, and legal thrillers, with a lot of subplots.  The genealogy of the characters would be more at home as a Lord of the Rings appendix.  But if you like your entertainment thick and complex, Noble House is for you.


Bestselling novels of 1981:
1. Noble House by James Clavell
2. The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving
3. Cujo by Stephen King
4. An Indecent Obsession by Colleen McCullough
5. Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith
6. Masquerade by Kit Williams
7. Goodbye, Janette by Harold Robbins
8. The Third Deadly Sin by Lawrence Sinders
9. The Glitter Dome by Joseph Wambaugh
10. No Time for Tears by Cynthia Freeman

Also published in 1981:

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
ronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
Tar Baby by Toni Morrison
The War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa

Sources:

Clavell, James. Noble House. 1981. New York: Dell, 1981. Print.

"James (duMaresq) Clavell." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature 
    Resource Center. Web.

1979: The Matarese Circle by Robert Ludlum

The Author:

Robert Ludlum (1927-2001) was born in New York City and attended Wesleyan University in Connecticut. After graduation, Ludlum served in the U.S. Marines.  After that, he held a career as a theater producer.  In 1960, he opened his own theater, Playhouse-on-the-Mall, in Paramus, New Jersey.  A decade later, he left the business to pursue a career in writing.  His first novel, The Scarlatti Inheritance (1971), set the tone for the rest of his ouevre.  It was not long before Ludlum became one of the best-selling authors in the world.  Ludlum published 22 novels before his death, while five were published posthumously.  Of the thirty-six years from 1971 and 2006, only ten did not feature a new book by Robert Ludlum.  The Matarese Circle marks Ludlum's third book on the top ten annual bestsellers list.  Seven more appear on the top ten, yet none other take the number one spot.  

Ludlum's death is itself the focus of controversy and conspiracy.  A few weeks after changing his will to leave his second wife millions of dollars in cash and real estate, Ludlum caught fire in his home. Complications from his burns led to his death.  Ludlum's nephew has since launched an investigation into Ludlum's demise.

The Book:

Length: 601 pages

Subject/Genre: Conspiracy/Spy Thriller

The Matarese Circle centers on two of the world's top spies, America's Brandon Scofield and the Soviet Union's Vasili Taleniekov.  In addition to their bitter professional rivalries, Taleniekov had Scofield's wife killed, and Scofield killed Taleniekov's brother in retaliation.  But, when Taleniekov becomes aware of a threat to the continued survival of both nations, a secret organization composed of important figures from across the world bent on total domination, he and Scofield must put aside their differences and work together to save the world.    

I read several Ludlum novels when in high school, and they all follow the same basic formula, for everything including the title.  The title will start with the word "The" and be followed by a proper noun, either a last name (e.g. Matarese, Bourne, Ambler, Scarlatti) or something mythological (e.g. Icarus, Gemini, Apocalypse).  This will be followed by a non-object noun (e.g. Circle, Ultimatum, Identity, Covenant, etc.).  Of the twenty-four novels he published under his own name, only 1992's The Road to Omaha doesn't follow this naming structure.  

The novels themselves also follow the same general plot.  A man is in some way connected to an intelligence agency.  Said man is frequently, but not always, too old for this shit.  He discovers or is made aware of a secret cadre bent on some form of world domination.  With the help of  a beautiful woman who possesses some skill or background necessary to his success, the man manages to thwart the evil plot (winning the girl in the process, of course).  Ludlum doesn't break the mold at all in this novel, so you get exactly what you'd expect: a fun page-turner that really doesn't reward close reading.  

Ludlum is a popcorn novelist, plain and simple.  His plots are contrived at best, character motivations often don't hold up under close scrutiny.  The Matarese Circle, in particular, has some pacing problems.  Most of the first two hundred pages focuses on the main characters figuring out things the reader already knows, and the information about the conspiracy comes in spurts.  You'll get twenty pages of Scofield moping, twenty of things blowing up, then an info dump.    

It's interesting to compare and contrast Ludlum with le Carré.  The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is by an actual MI-6 agent and deals with the moral bankruptcy and disillusionment of the Cold War from the perspective of someone who was honestly disillusioned by the Cold War.  The Materese Circle deals with the disillusionment in the way an action movie Hollywood studio executive would deal with it.  Scofield and Taleniekov have to deal with disillusionment and betrayal, but Ludlum trades depth for frequency.  It's just something for Scofield to dote on between the gunfights.  

The Matarese Circle itself is not a cultural touchstone and doesn't has already been lost to the realm of forgotten pop culture (although IMDB shows a film version in development).  However, like Zane Gray, Ludlum's influence is based on his entire oeuvre more than any particular work.  For one, Ludlum is one of the first trademarked dead authors.  While Fleming's Bond series still lives on through licensed sequels, the sheer number of Ludlum sequels since his death is impressive.  Since 2000, there have been twenty-three books marketed as "Robert Ludlum's..." where Ludlum's name is often bigger than the title.

While Tom Clancy has his own 'apostrophe series',  this is becoming more of a trend.  There are now four Sidney Sheldon apostrophe novels.  And of course we have to mention James Patterson, whose name has been on the cover of over one hundred novels since 1995.  The bestsellers list has been getting more and more homogeneous.  Looking at the annual top ten list for the 1910s, 52 different authors show up across the decade.  Looking at the 1970s, 59 different names show up.  Looking at 2000-2009, if we count things like "James Patterson with ____" as James Patterson, there are only 33 different authors over the 100 available slots.
   
I realize I've gone a bit off topic, but this is the point where the bestseller lists really starts to shift from the Michener/Uris/Hailey infotainment trifecta to the formulaic airport novel.  

Anyway, as far as The Matarese Circle goes, if you're looking for entertainment and nothing else, this will do just fine.



Bestsellers of 1979:

1. The Matarese Circle by Robert Ludlum
2. Sophie's Choice by William Styron
3. Overload by Arthur Hailey
4. Memories of Another Day by Harold Robbins
5. Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut
6. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
7. The Last Enchantment by Mary Stewart
8. The Establishment by Howard Fast
9. The Third World War: August 1985 by John Hackett
10. Smiley's People by John le Carré

Also published in 1979:

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
if on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer

1964: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré

The Author:

John le Carré (1931-  ) is the pseudonym of David Cornwell.  He was born in Poole, Dorset, England.  His mother abandoned the family when he was five years old.  His father had a troubled relationship with the law, and was connected to organized crime.

His family was financially volatile, his father making large sums of money and losing it, time after time.  In 1948, le Carré attended the University of Bern, Switzerland, to study foreign languages.  In 1950 he joined the British Army's Intelligence Corps before returning to England in 1952.  He married Alison Sharp in 1954.  It is around this point that le Carré joined MI5.  In 1960, he transferred from MI5 to MI6 (MI5 is the domestic intelligence agency, MI6 is the international.  The rough U.S. equivalent would be the NSA and the CIA). Le Carré ran operations within the intelligence community, led interrogations and tapped communications.  He published his first two novels, Call for the Dead (1961) and A Murder of Quality (1962) under a pseudonym due to MI6 regulations.  His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) was an international bestseller and won le Carré the Somerset Maugham Award for young British writers.

Le Carré left MI6 in 1964 after his identity was compromised, and became a full time writer.  He divorced Sharp in 1971 and married Valérie Eusatce in 1972.  He had eight more appearances on the annual bestsellers list including 1974's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Le Carré and his wife currently live in St. Buryan, Cornwall, U.K.


The Book:

Length: 256 pages

Subject/Genre: Cold War/Espionage

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is technically the third book in a series of interconnected stories, but reading the previous two novels is not necessary to understanding this one (I didn't even realize it was a sequel until after I'd finished reading it).  The novel follows Alec Leamas, a middle-aged spy in command of East German espionage.  The novel starts with him waiting at the border for an East German asset to cross into safe territory.  Every other asset Leamas had has been murdered.

The rest of the novel focuses on Leamas as he pretends to defect to East Germany and seeks to bring down the head of East Germany's secret police, Hans-Dieter Mundt while trying to keep safe the innocent woman who's gotten mixed up in it all.

I've never been a huge fan of the espionage genre, but I really enjoyed The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.  While the major focus in on the unfolding mystery of secret informants and obscure instructions, le Carré creates a world where moral ambiguity is the status quo, and anything that gets the desired results is accepted as a good thing by those in charge, regardless of the damage it does to any operatives or citizens.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold met with (and still receives) considerable critical acclaim.  Publishers Weekly has listed it as the best spy novel and TIME Magazine included it in their list of the 100 best novels since 1923.  A film version starring Richard Burton was released in 1965.

If you like espionage novels, or if you don't like espionage novels but want to be won over, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a good choice.




Bestsellers of 1964:

1. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré
2. Candy  by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg
3. Herzog by Saul Bellow  
4. Armageddon by Leon Uris
5. The Man by Irving Wallace
6. The Rector of Justin by Louis Auchincloss
7. The Martyred by Richard E. Kim
8. You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming
9. This Rough Magic by Mary Stweart
10. Convention by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Baily II

Also Published in 1964:

Roald Dahl - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
William Golding - The Spire

Sources:

Le Carré, John. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. New York, Coward-McCann Inc, 1963.
        Print.