L'alerte Ambler [Broché]

The Ambler Warning, like many of Robert Ludlum's thrillers, gets much of its sense from our knowledge that intelligence agencies cannot be trusted to play fair even by their own. Hal Ambler is held in a facility for insane agents and is himself being drugged to a point where he cannot trust his own crumbling sanity. Even when he escapes, he is unable to be sure of his own past and identity--his very face is not as he remembers, let alone his fishing cabin and the friends of his youth. Something has been made from the wreckage of his mind, and he is not sure whether every step he takes may not be a part of someone else's plan. By contrast, Caston is the sort of intelligence agent who despises the Hal Amblers of this world--he is an accountant who follows the money of assassination and terror round the world while sitting in front of a monitor. Yet he too starts to get a sense that he is being used.

Part of the originality and strength of Ludlum's new thriller is that he always knows when to pull surprises like the eventual alliance of Caston and Ambler--two dangerously flawed and partial men in search of knowledge and also of wholeness. The glimpses of the great world of political innovation, and the theories that inform them, also give this rather more thoughtfulness than we saw in, say, Ludlum's recent Bourne books. ---Roz Kaveney --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

For some bestselling authors, death is no impediment to an enduring career. But the latest Ludlum (d. 2001) novel, penned by an unnamed hired hand, reveals the problems inherent in such an arrangement: neither sufficiently like Ludlum's originals nor compellingly distinctive, it inhabits a kind of thriller purgatory to which only the most dedicated Ludlumite will be eager to venture. After a two-decade career as a clandestine operative, Hal Ambler is drugged and warehoused in the Parrish Island Psychiatric Facility, a government nuthouse for spies. A sympathetic nurse aids his escape, and soon Ambler is on the run, trying to figure out who he is and, more importantly, who he was. There are a few interesting characters—particularly CIA accountant Clayton Caston, a man who knows little about feelings but who can tease a mountain of information out of a spy's expense account—but the villains are mostly invisible and everybody else ends up dead before you really get to know them. Just because a writer can copy what was once a successful style does not automatically assure his publisher a successful book. (Oct. 25)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

There are audiobook readers, and there are audiobook performers. In the case of this Ludlum thriller, Scott Sowers rarely goes beyond delivering a competent rendering of the text. Occasionally, he lends some emotion to the words to convince listeners that he is portraying characters. But mostly he just reads, which is unfortunate as Ludlum could have used some help telling his complex story of a spy who escapes from a mental institution and tries to prevent an assassination. The story calls for some varied accents and characterizations. However, Sowers fails to deliver. And the work is poorer for it. M.S. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

This is Ludlum's twenty-sixth, a remarkable feat given that he is deceased. The locale is a barrier island six miles off the coast of Virginia and officially part of the National Wildlife Refuge System. It's really the site of a psychiatric facility for patients who possess highly classified information. At Parrish Island, "potential security risks could be carefully managed and the patients are identified by number, never by name." One of them is Hal Ambler, who had been a clandestine operative for nearly two decades. He doesn't know why he's being held by his own government. He also doesn't know how long he has been confined, but realizes he must escape. There's probably no doubt in readers' minds--right from the start--of the outcome, but they will be delighted to stick around to the end. Given the late author's still-viable name recognition, this novel is bound to be popular; and it could even be used as a good way for librarians to introduce unfamiliar readers to his works George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Bienvenue à Parrish Island, petite île paisible au large des côtes de Virginie. Parrish Island : son musée local, sa faune., sa flore... et son centre psychiatrique top secret, où végètent d'anciens espions américains devenus fous. A moins qu'ils n'aient été enfermés là parce qu'ils représentaient une menace pour le gouvernement... Hal Ambler est l'un de ces prisonniers. Une chose est sûre : il n'est pas fou. Pour le reste, mystère. Lui-même ne sait pas comment il s'est retrouvé là, pourquoi il est à l'isolement. Et il ne reconnaît pas son propre visage... Ambler parvient à s'évader et, la mort aux trousses, se lance à la poursuite de... lui-même. Il découvre alors que " Hal Ambler " n'existe pas. Personne n'a jamais entendu parler de lui - et pourtant tout le monde paraît déterminé à le supprimer. Pourquoi ? C'est ce qu'il devra découvrir, au péril de sa vie - et de celle de millions d'autres personnes.

On Parrish Island, a restricted island off the coast of Virginia, there is a little known and never visited psychiatric facility. There, far from prying eyes, the government stores former intelligence employees whose psychiatric state make them a danger to their own government, people whose ramblings might endanger ongoing operations or prove dangerously inconvenient.One of these employees, former Consular Operations agent Hal Ambler, is kept heavily medicated and closely watched. But there+s one difference between Hal and the other patients-Hal isn+t crazy. With the help of a sympathetic nurse, Hal manages to first clear his mind of the drug-induced haze and then pulls off a daring escape. Free, he+s out to discover who stashed him there and why-but the world he returns to isn+t the one he remembers. Friends and longtime associates don+t remember him, there are no official records of Hal Ambler, and when he first sees himself in the mirror, the face that looks back at him is not the one he knows as his own. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Robert Ludlum, maître incontesté du roman d'espionnage, a écrit plus d'une vingtaine de livres, vendus à plus de 200 millions d'exemplaires à travers le monde et traduits en 52 langues, dont, chez Grasset, Opération Hadès (2001), Objectif Paris (2004), Le Code Altman (2006) ou La Trahison Tristan (2007).