So-So read

The copywrite notice includes:

The Estate of Robert Ludlum has worked with a carefully selected author and editor to prepare and edit this work for publication.



Large portions of The Bancroft Strategy read like a poorly written romance novel. I started dog-earing pages:

" ... ruggedly handsome, strapping, and, yes, intimidating. His dense, heavy muscles weren't the kind produced by a health-club memebership ..."

" ... her hazel eyes glinted in the morning light."

"And you weren't there. And, to me, even though it was the middle of the day, it felt like night. There was a sort of darkness to it all."

"I'm getting a Daniel-in-the-lion's den vibe."

" ... and soon their bodies felt as if they were one, flexing and shuddering and flushing. It was a way of denying the violence and death they had seen, an affirmation in the face of negation, a way of saying yes in a world of no."

The book does not deserve to be on the same shelf as



Annoying and sloppy - at one point "eyes concealed behind sunglasses" and then "The tall man turned to look at him, and what Belknap saw in his eyes plain and undisguised: fear."

The finish is better than either the start or the backstretch, perhaps due to reader numbness. I will not bother with another "Estate of Robert Ludlum" novel.