The Bourne Identity (novel)

This article is about the novel. For the movie based on the novel, see The Bourne Identity (2002 film). For the telefilm based on the novel, see The Bourne Identity (1988 film).

The Bourne Identity
The Bourne Identity first edition cover
Author(s)	Robert Ludlum
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Jason Bourne Bourne Trilogy
Genre(s)	Thriller, Spy novel
Publisher	Richard Marek
Publication date	February 1980
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	523 pp (First edition)
ISBN	0399900705
OCLC Number	5675357
Dewey Decimal	813/.5/4
LC Classification	PZ4.L9455 Bo PS3562.U26
Followed by	The Bourne Supremacy

The Bourne Identity is a 1980 spy fiction thriller novel by Robert Ludlum about a retrograde amnesiac who must discover who he is and why several groups, including an assassin and the CIA, are trying to kill him. It is the first of the original Bourne Trilogy by Ludlum, and in further posthumous novels by Eric Van Lustbader, featuring Jason Bourne.

The Bourne Identity was named the second best spy novel of all-time, behind John le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, by Peter Cannon in Publishers Weekly.

The novel was adapted into a 1988 television movie starring Richard Chamberlain and Jaclyn Smith, and a 2002 movie starring Matt Damon, Franka Potente and Chris Cooper.

Plot summary

On a trawler in the stormy Mediterranean Sea, a man is shot repeatedly, with one bullet piercing his skull. The man is found floating in the water by a small ship. He has several bullet wounds including a head wound which has resulted in amnesia. The doctor treating him finds a message surgically embedded in his hip that contains details of a Swiss bank account, presumably held anonymously.

The patient heads to Zurich to visit the bank, where he learns his name, Jason Charles Bourne, and finds some US$ 5 million in his account. He transfers the bulk of this money and takes some in cash, leaving a quantity on deposit. As he leaves, two men with pistols attack him at the elevator. However, he manages to disarm one, taking his revolver and using him to take bullets fired at him from a third attacker in the lobby. In the panic he escapes back to his hotel and takes a hostage, a French-Canadian government economist, Marie St. Jacques. They then run through an economics conference and try to escape to the parking lot where someone shoots at them with a laser-sighted rifle. Bourne shoots the sniper, takes his car and tells his hostage to drive.

After a meeting in a restaurant and a shooting in an apartment, Bourne and St. Jacques are finally caught by their pursuers; it is clear that the men intend to kill them in separate locations. However, Bourne had hidden a gun in his sock and manages to kill his captors in their speeding car. He then manages to rescue Marie, as she is about to be raped. However, while doing so, he is shot several times by the rapist and is taken by Marie to a hotel to recuperate.

The couple then head to Paris in an attempt to find a link between the mysterious "Treadstone" corporation, the apparent source of the money in Bourne's account, and the banks, while in America, a secret conference at a Hilton Hotel is convened by members of the Pentagon top brass and the head of Treadstone. Bourne and Marie decide to draw out the attackers (who they learn may be led by Carlos the Jackal, an assassin whose trademark execution is a bullet in the throat) by withdrawing their funds using an illegal fiche. The plan succeeds since during an exchange on the Pont Neuf, Bourne takes out the assassins who hijacked the bank's van.

Back in America, Treadstone is revealed to an army officer named Gordon Webb (later revealed to be the brother of the main character). However, one of the men at the Hilton conference has been corrupted by Carlos and manages to get the head of Treadstone into a limo with him. He is in the process of blackmailing him when one of Carlos' operatives gets into the limo and executes them both. The operative known as "the European", with another man in tow, storms the mansion in which Treadstone is based and kills everyone inside including Gordon Webb, who is shot in the throat. They also frame Bourne for the murders.

Alexander Conklin, a crippled senior intelligence officer for the CIA and friend of Bourne, is tasked with handling the matter and he does so by requesting the services of a ex-paramilitary officer who brings another man on the job. This done, he baits Bourne into meeting him at the Rambouillet Cemetery in France, where he plans to shoot Bourne. However, Bourne (who has managed to get the French Military Intelligence general on his side) arrives early and incapacitates Conklin's hidden associate by breaking his fingers. Conklin, convinced Bourne has turned, pulls a gun but is knocked down by Bourne. Given the chance to kill Conklin, however, Bourne lets him get away.

Bourne realizes the French general's wife may be a mole for Carlos and discovers a boutique, which is used as a drop for her intel. He then manipulates the staff to turn on each other in the hope he can find something useful. He does when he interrogates the manager of the store, who gets his picture. He is also recognized by a man from his past whom he decides to meet on the steps of the Louvre. But on the day of the meeting, Carlos sticks a letter-opener into the manager's side and sends several men to kill Bourne's former colleague. However, Bourne tricks the majority of the men to leave the area by baiting them to chase the taxi he's in while bailing out and shooting the two gunmen assigned to kill the colleague. He learns that they were comrades in a CIA paramilitary unit called Medusa in the Vietnam war and his codename was Delta. The general's wife is killed and Bourne baits the Jackal into going to the USA.

In New York, Bourne is attempting to find the Treadstone mansion when a sniper, hired by Conklin, shoots at him and hits his cab driver instead. He then sees that a moving company (who are in fact Carlos' men in disguise) has arrived at the mansion. He bluffs his way in and is attacked on the top floor by Carlos wielding a knife. Carlos then shoots him and escapes. Realizing that he will bleed out soon, Bourne somehow manages to find the strength to kill all of Carlos' men. Carlos tries to mow him down with a commandeered automatic weapon, however he runs out of bullets; Carlos is about to shoot him when Conklin arrives and forces Carlos to retreat. Bourne still believes Conklin wants to kill him and passes out. The final chapter returns to Marie and two other men who tell her about Bourne's tragic past and his previous life. He had been a young, happy foreign service officer named David Webb, stationed in Cambodia until he lost his wife and children in a undeclared air strike. Marie hears about how he became the most successful paramilitary officer in the U.S. Army and his later career as "Cain", a rival to Carlos the Jackal, in a plan to draw the assassin out to be taken out. The novel ends with Jason Bourne running in and embracing Marie, declaring his name is David.

Sequels

Ludlum wrote two sequel novels to The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, forming the Bourne Trilogy. After Ludlum's death, author Eric Van Lustbader continued the story of Jason Bourne in The Bourne Legacy (2004), The Bourne Betrayal (2007), The Bourne Sanction (2008), The Bourne Deception (2009), The Bourne Objective (2010) and The Bourne Dominion (2011).

Publication history

• 1980, US, Richard Marek ISBN 0-399-90070-5, Pub date February 1980, Hardback.
• 1982, US, Bantam Books ISBN 0-553-24296-2, Pub date April 1982, Paperback.
• 1986, UK, Grafton ISBN 0-246-11121-6 Pub date June 19, 1986, Hardback.
• 1997, UK, HarperCollins ISBN 0-586-04934-7, Pub date December 1, 1997, Paperback.

Other similar stories

• The 2005 novel The Ambler Warning, also by Robert Ludlum has a plot very similar to The Bourne Identity.
• The 1987 Tamil movie Vetri Vizha, starring Kamal Haasan, is a loose adaptation of this novel.
• The teen novel series The Sleeper Conspiracy by Tom Sniegoski is similar to the Bourne series.
• The underlying storyline of the Belgian comic series XIII is similar to The Bourne Identity.
• A Hindi movie based on The Bourne Identity, Tumko Na Bhool Paayenge, starring Salman Khan, Sushmita Sen and Dia Mirza, was also released in 2002.
• The anime series Eden of the East is heavily influenced by the Bourne series.^{[citation needed]}