The Ambler Warning

February 10, 2008 in Thriller, Uncategorized by admin | No comments

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Author: Robert Ludlum

Genre: Thriller

Subject: Espionage

Rating: *****(5 Stars)

Summary:

Hal Ambler is a patient in a mental hospital for former spies run by the US government. He is not insane, but believes he has been put there as part of a conspiracy. With the help of Laurel Holland, a sympathetic nurse, he escapes and begins trying to find out who locked him up and why. He discovers that his friends do not remember him, and that any record of his government employment has been erased.

As Ambler visits places where he used to live and work, he finds himself dodging “recovery teams” sent to retrieve him. At the same time, he begins to remember long-forgotten bits of his past, including the assassinations he participated in.

Ambler has a remarkable ability to read people. Not only can he tell when he is being lied to, but he can observe a person and tell many things about them with startling accuracy. As he follows the threads of his past, he realizes that he was locked up because he learned the truth about one of his assassinations: that the victim was not a monster in need of killing, but a potentially great leader.

Ambler’s investigation leads him into the center of a diabolical plot to assassinate the new, progressive leader of China. As he scrambles to find and stop the assassins, he realizes that he is being set up to take the blame for the killing. The book concludes with a staggering plot twist that is classic Ludlum.

My Thoughts:

Note: Robert Ludlum is the author of well-known espionage thrillers such as The Bourne Identity (Bourne Trilogy Book 1), which was made into a movie several years ago. I learned just now that Ludlum died in 2001, which means The Ambler Warning, published in 2005, was probably one of several novels completed by a heretofore unknown ghostwriter. (Wikipedia) This book does not suffer at all from such treatment; if anything, it is one of his best. It contains all the classic Ludlum ingredients: narrow escapes; gut-wrenching betrayals; startling plot twists; and exciting scenes of fighting, escape, and evasion. This is a must-read for Ludlum fans.