Features
- Cover Type: Mass Market Paperback with 448 pages
- Published by: St. Martin's Paperbacks
- Edition: 1st Edition March 15, 2002
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0312981589
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0312981587
-
Book Dimensions:
6.4 x 4 x 1.1 inches
- Weighs: 12 ounces
Product Review
Covert-One, the president's personal, super-secret agency formed after some recent virus-driven chaos (
The Hades Factor, cowritten with Gayle Lynds), is staffed by an unknown number of international covert operatives, including Dr. Jon Smith, late of the USAMRIID. And a good thing, too, because someone's helped themselves to Russia's share of the world's last two stores of the smallpox virus, an eradicated yet hideously deadly bug with no ready vaccine.
That the pox was nabbed and who nabbed it is clear enough early on. Why such a seemingly large and disparate cadre of global citizens (keeping the players straight puts one in mind of Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First" routine) picked to pinch the bug and for what end are the novel's driving questions. Freelance Serbian uber-nasty, Ivan Beria, is among the apparent perpetrators as are Dylan Reed and Adam Treloar of NASA, Tony Price, the head of the super- secret NSA, and a bunch of Russians. The good-guys roster claims Smith; Covert- One's head, Nathaniel Klein; Briton and ex-SAS man, Peter Howell; Smith's deceased girlfriend's sister and CIA operative, Randi Russell; the girlfriend's best friend, backup shuttle astronaut Megan Olson; and another bunch of Russians. Suffice it to say that Smith and company trot the globe, cat-and- mousing after the pox and in so doing careen through a classically speedy and Ludlumesque (if coincidence dependent) plot leaving large numbers of efficiently dispatched corpses in their wake.
Most authors of international thriller-mysteries would give their right trench coat to make The
New York Times® Best Sellers list. Of the late Robert Ludlum's 21 novels, 21 have resided upon that list. Where
The Cassandra Compact, written with bestselling thriller author Philip Shelby (
Gatekeeper, etc.), winds up is anyone's guess, but a few hundred thousand nightstands is a good place to start. And stay tuned for more installments--Ludlum may be dead, but he's not done yet.
--Michael Hudson
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
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.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: The Cassandra Compact: A Covert-One Novel (Paperback)
When Mr. Ludlum passed away recently the readers of his work lost one of the true originals in a genre that has becoming overcrowded with imitators. Not all of his books were as special as a given person's favorite, however he wrote with the knowledge that made his stories credible. This second book in, "The Covert One Series", is as bad and possibly worse than the initial volume in the series. The obituary that I read stated he was working on three additional books before he died that will be published. I hope someone has the integrity to publish the work if it was his or be candid with where the book was when he stopped working upon it. At the very least these Covert One amalgams that clearly had a minimal amount of his involvement should not be the final works to carry his name. That would be a travesty of this man's real books, and to his memory. Between the last of this series and this mess, we had, "The Prometheus Deception", a few minutes with that book proves the difference between a Robert Ludlum Book, and Robert Ludlum's Covert Collaboration. This book is bad from the cover. The word, "Cassandra", has a very specific meaning and it has absolutely nothing to do with this book's contents. In the first few dozen pages you will read the most ridiculous writing. A man is blown back by a shockwave and is unconscious; upon waking he not only can identify the explosive used but how it was detonated. His explanation is absurd, the material is absurd as it is the last thing that would have been used, and the reasons are much clearer than the preposterous statements. How about the fact that NASA has learned to defy one of the basic laws of nature? Great, explain it to me, don't just toss it in a sentence and expect me to take your word for Science Fiction that would challenge Star Wars. But this continues throughout the book, "military grade bullets", what was military about them? How do you hide behind a Grand Piano so that "expert assassins" shred the piano with these magic bullets and miss you? Probably the most offensive example of lazy writing, but by no means the only example was as follows. If you wish to demonize someone it's bad enough to drag up the most overused group of the 20th Century and tie the person/company to them. When you then state an absolute falsehood about a fact that anyone who has read about the Historical Period being used would identify as ridiculous, the writer goes beyond lazy, to something just above mentally inert. There are facts stated at the beginning that change by a factor of 600% later in the book, and other events that are too implausible to mention here. Mr. Ludlum was one of the best. Having read these Covert One pieces of trash, I am convinced he had little to do with them. Compare any ten pages from one of his books to one of these 2 alleged collaborations and decide for yourself. My library of this man's work has come to an end as soon as I toss these two in the recycle bin.
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