Bourne Legacy - Book Review

The Bourne Lgacy
by Eric Van Lustbader
St Martins Press 2004

This review is the result of forgetting to take a challenge book out with me to read on Sunday. So I was forced to buy a book - and I purchased this one. Robert Ludlum died in 2001. So Eric Van Lustbader (he of the Japanese genre) has agreed to or been chosen to continue the series. This was the first book he wrote. A second book was publoished in 2007 and a third book is due out soon.


David Webb is a professor of English at Georgetown University in Washington DC. He has a wife and 2 young children. One day he is shot at by an unknown asassin. David's hidden persona (Jason Bourne) takes over and puts him into survival mode. David goes on the run and heads for his mentor's home. There he finds the mentor dead along with another friend who was helping him to suppress Jason Bourne's past. The police show up and David goes on the run. He has to, because his car is outside the house and he knows he was set up, and he must find out by whom.

The trail leads David (now being called Jason Bourne again) to Paris, and then to Budapest in Hungary. Along the way he meets his son again. The son Bourne has long throught dead. Many years before David Webb became an assassin, he had a first family in Thailand. A Thai wife and two children. They were all killed. The killers were never found. In his despair and grief, David went to Saigon where he became a CIA agent.

Now his past has come back to haunt him, as together Bourne and Joshua (the son) seek to find out why someone wants Bourne dead.

This was a very exciting book. I read it in 2 days (Sunday and Monday). Could not put it down. If you like the earlier Bourne books by Robert Ludlum, then you will like this one as well. It opens up Bourne's past and make him much more real.

According to Wikipedia the movie rights have been purchased ands negotiations are currently under way to make a film of this book - hopefully starring Matt Damon.