Finished The Bourne Legacy by Eric Van Lustbader. The original Bourne books were written by Robert Ludlum, who passed away. But Lustbader has written some new Bourne books based on Ludlum’s world/characters (kind of like the non-Ian Fleming James Bond books). I believe Legacy is the first of three Bourne books Lustbader has penned.

In this one, Jason Bourne (real name David Webb) is working as a linguistics professor at a college when someone takes a shot at him. Bourne goes to see his old friend Alex Conklin for help, only to find Alex dead — and himself framed for Conklin’s murder. From there, Bourne journeys to Paris and Budapest and uncovers a chilling terrorist plot that will remake the world. (Don’t they always?)

Wheezley saw this at the grocery story and bought it for me, knowing how much I liked the original Bourne books and the movies with Matt Damon. Besides, it’s a spy book. I’ll read just about anything with spies in it. 😎

But Legacy didn’t work for me as well as Ludlum’s original books did. Mainly, because Marie (Bourne’s wife) isn’t in it. The great thing about Ludlum’s books was the relationship between Bourne and Marie. But in Legacy, Lustbader has Marie go to a safehouse. She doesn’t take part in the action, and she doesn’t get a single word of dialogue. Bourne doesn’t even think about her that much, which was disappointing.

Also, too much of the action was away from Bourne. I don’t mind reading the villain’s POV sections, but Lustbader had about ten different characters with POV sections. There’s the bad guy, two Chechnyan terrorists, another assassin with a connection to Bourne, a detective, a French detective, and a femme fatale, for starters. I want to read about Bourne, not all these other folks. Also, each one of these characters is an egomaniac who thinks he/she is better, stronger, and smarter than everyone else. That got a little old after a while.

There are some nice action scenes, but overall, the terrorists’ plot and bad guys were pretty predictable, except for one nice double-cross in the middle of the book.

So thumbs down on this one, although I’ll probably buy the other Bourne books and read those too at some point.

Up next: Echo Burning by Lee Child

Books in my TBR pile: about 13 or so.