The Hades Factor

In the prolog three seemingly unrelated people dye of a uniquely fast acting virus. Prepare for gushing blood and more. Our hero, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Jonathan ("Jon") Smith M.D. from USAMRIID, is warned by an old friend to be ware of the Ides of March. Oops I meat that the friend xxx warns him that he is in trouble. Evidently the warning is too little too late to save the love of his life. He spends the rest of the story with the help of some extraordinary friends, tracking down the culprits. All the characters are bigger than life. They can go anywhere and do anything whit out the annoying details that would make the story impossible. Of course Robert Ludlum is a tad over descriptive and fluffs a 100 page tale into a 400 page tale mostly with gushy stuff (I suspect the influence of Gayle Lynds). The very thing that makes this story surreal is the very thing that makes this story fun. I am looking forward to the next book in the "Covert-One" series.

Ludlum and Lynds team together to create one awesome bio-terrorist thriller. The great thing about this story is that it has all the earmarks of Ludlum's expertise of espionage at the highest levels combined with the flavor of Lynd's storytelling. One can only hope these two team up again.

This was my first Ludlum book, and I thought it was an exciting read. Although the writing is not as tight and compact as I like, it was a page-turner nonetheless.The characters are interesting and the plot pushes forward at a quick pace. My total reading time was 6 and 1/2 hours.

I'm a hardcore Ludlum fan having read all his books usually more than once (it's hard waiting two years for something new to read). I though when I saw by Ludlum and Lynds that this would be another Tom Clancy scam (I can't stand anything he wrote with someone else), but was I pleasantly surprised. This is a good book. Worthy of Ludlum's name.

This is the kind of light quick reading that is wonderful if you just want to be entertained. But, it can make you think if you like to "look ahead" and guess how events will turn out. Again, I would not classify it as great literature, but as a mighty fine read.