The Hungry Hungry Writer

THE TRISTAN BETRAYAL
by Robert Ludlum

Rating 5/10

Robert Ludlum was one of my favorite authors growing up. The first novel I ever read was a Robert Ludlum novel back in the 6th grade called, The Matarese Circle. That was his best. Even better than the Bourne trilogy (with a fourth book written by Eric Van Lustbader).

I decided to give Tristan a try. And it worked for a while. I was engaged about 50% of the time. The last 100 pages were a struggle and took me three days to struggle through it.

Ludlum tried TOO hard to parallel Metcalfe to a ballet storyline told in the book with a character named Tristan. Completely forced and on-the-nose. A turnoff.

Why? Well, I wasn’t sure if I’d get through a 1940s spy thriller. But it worked. Then I wasn’t sure if I would buy the fact that this ‘adventure’ that Metcalfe goes through was a manipulation to the start of World War II. But I did. The biggest problem I had was Metcalfe wasn’t a great spy. He wasn’t as skilled as other heroes in films and other books for a NOC to get through the life threatening danger. Scofield and Talaniekev in The Matarese Circle were. Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity is. Metcalfe isn’t.

This book was told as a flashback of Metcalfe’s past. But the payoff in the present was not a payoff. And the end was completely predictable and clichéd. Some of the ways Metcalfe escaped death was so impossible it made his character that much more unbelievable.

The story was constructed well. Unfortunately the characters didn’t fit well. If there was more depth to the characters, I believe this book would have been close to my tops as far as espionage novels.

I give it 5 stars out of 10.

FROM AMAZON.COM

In the fall of 1940, the Nazis are at the height of their power - France is occupied, Britian is enduring the Blitz and is under the threat of invasion, America is neutral, and Russia is in an uneasy alliance with Germany. Stephen Metcalfe, the younger son of a prominent American family, is a well-known man about town in occupied Paris. He’s also a minor asset in the U.S.’s secret intelligence forces in Europe. Through a wild twist of fate, it falls to Metcalfe to instigate a bold plan that may be the only hope for what remains of the free world. Now he must travel to wartime Moscow to find, and possibly betray, a former love - a fiery ballerina whose own loyalties are in question - in a delicate dance that could destroy all he loves and honors.