{"id":11986,"date":"2023-01-21T09:09:51","date_gmt":"2023-01-21T14:09:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/?p=11986"},"modified":"2023-01-21T09:09:53","modified_gmt":"2023-01-21T14:09:53","slug":"the-matarese-circle-by-robert-ludlum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/2023\/01\/21\/the-matarese-circle-by-robert-ludlum\/","title":{"rendered":"“The Matarese Circle” by Robert Ludlum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Copyright 1979 by Robert Ludlum. Published Bantam Books Inc, New York.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I take a break from mysteries occasionally to read popular books in other genres.. This one falls into the “epic struggle of one man against a worldwide conspiracy” category. The protagonist is Brandon Scofield – also and somewhat inexplicably called “Bray”. He is an aging and increasingly more jaded senior spook who is drawn into a web of deceit and terror by his Russian counterpart, Vasili Taleniekov, the man who engineered the murder of Scofield’s wife 10 years before. Through a series of mysterious events both become pariahs in their own organizations and are forced to work together to thwart the unseen enemy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plot is fast-paced and global, running through not only Moscow and Washington but also Corsica, Leningrad, France, Germany, England and ending up in Boston. The body count climbs at each stop with a big bump at the end. The plot is deep, somewhat plausible and, of course, includes a beautiful young woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A good read, but pretty standard stuff for Ludlum. And the plot shows its age a bit – it was written before cell phones and wide use of the internet so phone booths and snail mail are used extensively. It doesn’t spoil the plot but is a constant reminder of how old the book is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5 out of 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Copyright 1979 by Robert Ludlum. Published Bantam Books Inc, New York. I take a break from mysteries occasionally to read popular books in other genres.. This one falls into the “epic struggle of one man against a worldwide conspiracy” category. The protagonist is Brandon Scofield – also and somewhat inexplicably called “Bray”. He is an … Continue reading »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1VniU-37k","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11986"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13648,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11986\/revisions\/13648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}