I can tell you the exact moment I stopped reading The Bourne Sanction by Eric Van Lustbader. It was when I read this passage.
“It’s amazing,” Moira said.
Bourne looked up from the file he’d snatched from Veronica Hart. “What’s amazing?”
“You sitting here with me in this opulent corporate jet.” … (description of what she’s wearing … “Weren’t you supposed to be on your way to Moscow tonight?
I closed the book. I checked to make sure the power bill I’d been using as a bookmark was removed. Then I walked the book across the room and put it in the garbage can.
Where it belonged. Because DAMN.
Robert Ludlum’s been dead for 17 and his memory deserves better than this. I’ve read the first two of his Bourne books and enjoyed them. They were pretty good. Having been written in the 1960s, they’re nothing like the movies. Nothing. Really no similarity at all. But they were competently written and pretty good page turners. I enjoyed the movies even more.
Ludlum wrote three Bourne novels and a bunch of others stuff, and died in 2001. His literary estate has hired this guy to write more Bourne novels (Sanction was written in 2008.) He’s written 11 of them, because there’s money to be made and who cares about the reputation of a dead author. The books sell and might get made into movies. More money for everyone.
Eric van Lustbader is a hack. I know he’s written more than 40 books, he’s terribly successful and I’m a schlub with one title to my name and plans for more. But this was crap, and it was crap enough to ensure I won’t bother reading another of his yarns. The story was cliched and the writing is just horrid. Terrible. That quote above is the worst I came across in the first 225 pages, but it’s not atypical. It’s standard low-context dialogue that’s supposed to convey setting or back story without going to the trouble of writing it well. Instead, he has people say things no one would ever say to advance the story. I would be embarrassed to have written the “dialogue” above. If the jet is opulent, SHOW the opulence. Don’t have one of your characters actually call it an “opulent corporate jet.” That’s a sentence no one ever said. Ever.
In fact, now that I think of it, I’ve read the word opulent hundreds of times over my life but I don’t believe I’ve ever heard anyone SAY it. It’s impossible to believe a character who says something like that.
I can’t tell if it’s the author’s laziness, or if he really thinks that’s good writing. But it’s not. Oh, gods, it’s not.
Meanwhile, I’m chugging along finishing my new book which I hope to have done by mid-October. Then we’ll see if I’m any better.
BaurLife 