Bourne Identity
Robert Ludlum
Audio Cassette
(Random House Audio, May 1, 1987)
For those of you thinking I've seen the movie. Why bother with the book? Well, the book and the movie do not really look alike. There are aspects that are the same. Bourne has amnesia. He meets a girl. He is on the run. The US govt is involved. He is a BA. That's pretty much the only similarities though. The entire plot differs. The villains differ. The girl differs. Probably 85-90% of the book is different. So why bother? Because this is the real story and it's far more complex than a 1.5 hour movie can give you. The writing is very well done. The research put into this book must have been a long process. Be it research just for this book or an accumulation of life experience, it spans continents and multiple languages. There's the banking system and the slick ways Bourne survives. Perhaps it isn't exactly how things were done, but it could be. It's realistic regardless of whether it is real or not. The book spans over 7 months of Bourne's new life. It takes him from being like a newborn babe to being a grown man able to destroy the world.(Amazon customer)