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Summary
Summary
For thirty years, Robert Ludlum has been the acknowledged master of suspense and global intrigue. With an unbroken string of bestsellers in nearly every country around the world, his books have thrilled hundreds of millions of readers setting a standard that has never been equaled. Having once again raised the bar with his widely acclaimed bestsellers The Prometheus Deception and The Hades Factor, Ludlum returns with the latest novel in his Covert-One series. Delivering all of the complex, compelling action and heartstopping suspense for which he has become so justly famous, Robert Ludlum's latest is a novel that could only come from the imagination of one of America's greatest storyteller:The Cassandra CompactYuri Danko, a deep cover Russian asset for Covert-One, is on the run.His last communication was a cryptic and urgent plea for extraction.With no hint of what sudden danger Danko encountered or information he uncovered that could have driven him to such extreme action, Covert-One operative Jon Smith is sent to the pre-arranged meeting place with instructions to bring Danko out.Ten days later, in Venice, Danko arrives breathless and bedraggled at Jon Smith's table at an outdoor caf in Venice.But he barely opens his mouth before his body is ripped apart by a spray of assassins' bullets.Smith, eluding the hail of bullets, gives chase - only to witness the assassins themselves falling prey to a brutal execution.With only the scant clues left behind by Danko to go on, Jon Smith and Covert-One quickly conclude that someone is out to do the unthinkable - attempt to steal Russia's store of the smallpox virus.Now completely eradicated, smallpox is the deadliest of viruses and could well cause an epidemic of undreamed of scale should it be released in the general population. Smith and his Covert-One colleagues must prevent the virus from being stolen.But their unseen adversaries are several steps ahead of them and the virus is en route to the United States.Now they must unravel the complex scheme, overcome their powerful and invisible opponents, and recover or destroy the virus before the power of total Armageddon rests comfortably in the arms of a madman.AUTHORBIO: Robert Ludlum is the internationally bestselling author of twenty-four novels published in thirty-two languages and forty countries. Read by hundreds of millions world-wide, his books include The Prometheus Deception, The Bourne Identity, The Icarus Agenda, and The Chancellor Manuscript. He divides his time between Florida and Montana.Philip Shelby is a screenwriter and novelist whose numerous books include the bestselling novels Days of Drums, Last Rites, and The Gatekeeper. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
Author Notes
Robert Ludlum was born May 25, 1927 in New York City. He enlisted in the Marines at the age of eighteen and received a B.A. from Wesleyan University in 1951.
He began acting professionally at the age of sixteen in the 1943 Broadway production of Junior Miss. He also had roles in summer stock and appeared in over 200 television dramas for such live programs as Studio One and Kraft Television Theater. He then tried producing with the 1956 Broadway production of The Owl and the Pussycat. He took the play, four years later, to his creation of Shopping-Center Theater at Playhouse-on-the-Mall in Paramus, New Jersey.
His first novel, The Scarlatti Inheritance, was published in 1971. His other works include The Matlock Paper, The Chancellor Manuscript, The Bourne Identity, The Scorpio Illusion, The Matarese Countdown, and The Bancroft Strategy. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Jonathan Ryder and Michael Shepherd. He died on March 12, 2001 at the age of 74.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews 2
Publisher's Weekly Review
Ludlum continues to imitate his imitators in his second Covert-One biotech thriller (after The Hades Factor), this time with coauthor Shelby (Days of Drums, etc.). Medical researcher and sometime spy Lt. Col. Jonathan Smith aided by CIA agent Randi Russell, British operative Peter Howell and ultrasecret spymaster Nathaniel Klein faces another villainous plot to unleash a deadly disease on an unsuspecting populace. Retired from the Army Medical Research Unit for Infectious Diseases after the death of his fianc‚e, Smith heads to Venice to meet a Russian scientist who is killed by Sicilian mercenaries before he can warn Smith that a sample of smallpox is about to be stolen from a Russian bioresearch facility. Up against a global military-corporate conspiracy with moles at NASA, the Pentagon and the KGB, Smith follows the smallpox across the Atlantic to Houston Mission Control and beyond. The cinematic chase through changing landscapes and mounting body count gives the book its rapid pace, while insider politics, tradecraft and technical wizardry lend an extra kick. Boilerplate dialogue ("The hit came down as arranged. But there was an unexpected development. I'm expecting an update shortly") and movie logic (after ordering the space shuttle to land in Nevada with the most virulent smallpox strain ever and several dead astronauts aboard, the president hops Air Force One to go meet it) show Ludlum may leverage his brand name, but no longer delivers the complex situations that earned him his reputation as a premier writer of international intrigue. National advertising. (May 15) Forecast: Ludlum died just last month, and word is he left a few books in the works. It's been a while since he was in top form, but some readers are bound to overlook the telltale "Robert Ludlum's" in the title. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
A Covert-One novel, The Cassandra Compact probably stretches the spy/conspiracy thriller's possibilities to the edges of near plausibility, but in the wake of recent terrorism, the boundaries of reality may far outreach the standards of the genre's art. Fortunately or not, one can hope that the late Ludlum and Shelby were merely playing in the fields of fantasy with their superheroic intelligence officer Dr. Jonathan Smith. A large cast of characters, portrayed by narrator George Guidall, follows the movements and misdirections of a small vial of a deadly biohazard across miles of this planet and beyond in a story that depends heavily on coincidence but was nonetheless entertaining in a more innocent reading time. Joyce Kessel, Villa Maria Coll., Buffalo, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.