The Matarese Countdown

By: Robert Ludlum

Narrated by: Stephen Lang

Twenty years ago, top agents from the CIA and KGB banded together to bring down the Matarese Circle, an international cabal of powerbrokers and assassins whose sole objective was to achieve worldwide economic domination. Now the bloody Matarese dynasty is back--and the only man with the power to stop it may have already run out of time....

CIA case officer Cameron Pryce is hot on the trail of the new Matarese alliance. His only chance to terminate its ruthless activities is to follow the trail of blood money and stone-cold killers right to the heart of its deadly conspiracy.

From the Hamptons to London's Belgrave Square, Matarese assassins have already struck with brutal efficiency, eliminating all who stand in their way. Their chain of violence is impossible to stop--until Pryce gets a rare break. One of the Matarese's victims survives long enough to whisper dying words that will blow the case wide open: the top secret code name for legendary retired CIA agent Brandon Scofield--the only man who has ever infiltrated the Matarese inner circle and lived to tell about it.©1997 Robert Ludlum; (P)1997 Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio Publishing, Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio Publishing, A Division of Random House Inc.

Critic reviews

"Welcome to Robert Ludlum's world...fast pacing, tight plotting, international intrigue."
--The Plain Dealer, Cleveland

"If a Pulitzer Prize were awarded for escapist fiction, Robert Ludlum undoubtedly would have won it. Ten times over."
--Mobile Register

Great Expectations

and they weren't met. Maybe it's the abridgement, maybe it was just the book itself. Maybe I have just outgrown his writing style....I don't know. The over-cliched characters, caricatures is more accurate, are distracting. Lines like "What they need is a mother and I'm just the mother to do it!" (paraphrasing of course) almost made me replay some Orson Scott Card. It's in my library now so at some point I'll listen to it agin and maybe my opinion will change...