Thursday, June 28, 2007

Bourne lives on

By Carol Memmott, USA TODAY

Fans of rogue CIA agent Jason Bourne get a double dose this summer. Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Betrayal, a new novel by Eric Van Lustbader (Warner, $25.99), is in stores, and the film version of Lud-lum's espionage thriller, The Bourne Ultimatum,starring Matt Damon, arrives Aug. 3.

Ludlum wrote three Bourne novels, and they didn't stop when he died in 2001. His estate chose friend and author Van Lustbader to continue the series.

"I decided to accept the estate's offer because I knew it would be fun to do, and it would be a kick to keep what I consider his greatest creation alive," he says.

In The Bourne Betrayal, Bourne searches for a missing CIA deputy director and works to dismantle a terrorism network. Van Lustbader also wrote The Bourne Legacy (2005).
Bourne is just part of Ludlum's legacy:

•210 million copies of his books in print.
•21 titles published before he died, including The Scarlatti Inheritance, The Icarus Agenda.
•6 titles published posthumously, including The Ambler Warning and The Sigma Protocol.
•Books to movies:
The Rhinemann Exchange, TV miniseries (1977)
The Osterman Weekend (1983)
The Holcroft Covenant (1985)
The Bourne Identity, TV miniseries (1988)
The Bourne Identity (2002)
The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

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