Book Review: The Matarese Circle

 

© 1979 by Robert Ludlum

 

Let me confess that I am not an expert on the spy novel. In five decades of reading, I’ve actually only put away three: Moonraker, by Ian Fleming, The Bourne Identity, by Robert Ludlum, and now this, The Matarese Circle, also by Ludlum. I had given Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy a go nearly twenty years ago but made little headway and gave it up about fifty pages in.

I’ve always said I should make my way through Fleming’s Bond oeuvre. Yet I never do for some reason. It would not be in the Venn diagram intersection of Bucket List Books and Urgent Must-Read Books. Perhaps if I won Powerball or discovered a Picasso under a cloth in the attic I might get to them. It is this type of spirit that informs my attitude toward the spy novel.

But I found a trio of hardcover Ludlum books a few weeks ago while accompanying my littlest daughter in her thrifting obsession, all for $5. I had to bite.

Way, way back when the Mrs. and I were newlyweds, we went to see the first Bourne movie. I was impressed. It was a great movie, and I say that with no reservations. The sequels sucked, with their over-dependence on that nauseating sea sickness of shaky cam, but the first one was good enough to make me seek out the original source material.

Now Ludlum appears to me to be an old school Cold War enthusiast. His novels are intricate pieces of work detailing the sticky web of pre-computer practical spywork: calling from different locations, mail drops; creating, maintaining and utilizing espionage networks; dueling with lies; fake identities; sleuthing in vast libraries; comparing dental X-rays; a thorough knowledge of hand guns; and a MacGuyver-esque ability to rig the most common, everyday objects into fiery explosive devices.

This appealed to me. In part, to assuage my embarrassment at failing to finish Tinker Tailor et al. Possibly John Le Carré is the intellectual spy novel and Ludlum the hands-on. Le Carré the right brain and Ludlum the left. Dunno, but that seems kinda right in these admittedly uninformed musings.

Anyway, I don’t intent to go into the plot here. Suffice it to say the Matarese Circle is an evil, secret society bent on world domination, and our hero must join forces with his deadly Soviet enemy to bring them down. Six hundred pages, which probably could be trimmed by about a third, but then you wouldn’t get to see the protagonist make all those fiery devices with everyday objects.

The bottom line, though, what really, really, really struck me, was how wonderfully refreshing it was to read a completely non-PC book. In this era of our own self-Sovietization of culture, of censorship in the public entertainment media to the cause of the hardest leftist ideology, how amazing it was to journey through a book that throws exactly zero F’s in this direction.

There’s no LGBT nonsense. There’s no social justice nonsense. True, it was written in 1979, and it’s also true that it’s a total product of its time. Perhaps it’s the comparison of then and now that struck me so. I was 12 when The Matarese Circle was published, and I was unaware of it, being in the thrall of Alien and Isaac Asimov stories. But I’m certain my father read it, and tens of thousands of other men like him.

Our hero, “Bray,” is a non-repentant alpha male. A toxic male, if I’m allowed to use a word tossed about by those who seek safe spaces. Bray – a veteran of the Korean War and a world-weary Cold Warrior – walks in a completely non-feminist world. Well-defined gender roles are a common thing in this world, this world that had existed for centuries if not millennia, and it is completely unremarkable to the characters. Our female protagonist and Bray’s love interest does not feel oppressed by the patriarchy. Yes, Antonia is tough and even though she has trained as a terrorist, she can’t beat the crap out of a dozen 200-pound male mercenaries at a single go. She is tough and brave as a woman, not as a masculine female.

Did I mention Bray is an alpha male? So alpha that the night before his final odds-against-him confrontation with the Matarese Bray buys and cooks a porterhouse steak, pairing it with a bottle of Scotch, and cigarettes, cigarettes, cigarettes. Somebody cancel this character!!!

My one negative with the story, other than its length, is that there were a lot of deaths. A lot of innocent people murdered (by the Matarese). I didn’t necessarily keep track, but enough happened for me to take notice. Maybe twenty, twenty-five civilians get whacked. Add about a hundred or so of the bad guys. And a lot of biting down on cyanide tablets, which may or may not have been cliché in 1979.

All in all, I give it a solid B. The subject isn’t my area of interest, but I was able to read it consistently, putting away 30-40 pages at a sitting. Would be a good beach read in paperback form. I have two other Ludlum hardcovers on the shelf, there for when the spirit hits me, which at this point seems like next summer and the summer after that.

As a side note, I read that The Matarese Circle was nearly made into a movie fifteen years ago off the success of the Bourne movies. Denzel Washington was cast as Bray and Tom Cruise as the Soviet counterpart. Both completely miscast, naturally. And I’m kinda glad it was never made, because 1) Hollywood can’t make a decent movie anymore (maybe it could’ve fifteen years ago, but it was starting to decline even back then), and 2) all that refreshing stuff I mentioned in the preceding paragraphs would have been tossed aside. No, it would have been garroted and left for dead on the side of the road with a scrawled note tacked to its chest: How DARE You!