The Bourne Sacrifice

May 30, 2022
Thriller Award winner Freeman’s assured third contribution to the Bourne franchise (after 2021’s The Bourne Treachery) finds Jason Bourne on the trail of Vladimir Putin’s favorite assassin, the man known as Lennon. Besides wanting to take down the killer for his many assassinations, Bourne wants to question him because he has the keys to Bourne’s forgotten past. Bourne finally corners Lennon in a cabin in Iceland, but he escapes a fiery death when his assistant, codenamed Yoko, arrives in a helicopter and whisks him away. Meanwhile, Bourne’s old girlfriend, journalist Abbey Laurent, who hasn’t seen him in two years, is looking into the death of a mysterious German woman in Washington, D.C. Bourne’s hunt and Abbey’s investigation lead them toward each other—and to the Pyramid, a secret organization that will stop at nothing to achieve its nefarious goals. Never mind the familiar plot. Exciting action scenes, the untangling of the Pyramid mystery, Bourne’s fighting skills, and the enduring conundrum of his lost past keep the pages turning. Freeman is a worthy successor to Robert Ludlum. Agent: Sloan Harris, ICM Partners.

June 1, 2022
Jason Bourne confronts a strange and frightening enemy in the latest entry in the series created by Ludlum and written by Freeman. Let's face it, Bourne is never going to learn the secrets of his past. In this latest episode, he reunites with Canadian journalist Abbey Laurent, who plays a key part in this fast-moving thriller. He had left her behind two years earlier because "when you're with me, you're in danger....I'm a killer." For her part, she is known in her profession as "one of the few people who calls out the bullshit on both sides." A woman is stabbed to death near the Potomac, and Abbey wants to know why. The killing is the work of the Pyramid, a secretive organization that ostensibly fights lies and misinformation around the world but does so with lies of its own. She asks too many questions about the murder and runs afoul of the organization, which ruins her career by planting false stories about her on social media. But worse, the Pyramid wants her dead. "It doesn't matter what's true and what's a lie," she's told. In Iceland, Bourne silently awaits his prey, an evil dude named Lennon who enjoys sharing a surname with the late Beatle, so much so that he even has an evil girlfriend named Yoko. Hero and villain meet several times, each missing or simply passing up chances to kill the other, apparently because they'd rather talk than pull the trigger. As fans know, Bourne has lost all memory of his life before being shot in the head. The CIA doesn't want him to learn of his past, which is the mystery that drives the series. Meanwhile, he's a loner by necessity, because "nothing gets you killed faster than trust." There are odd coincidences, such as Bourne and Abbey meeting again and the hero and the bad guy meeting again and again, but readers won't mind. Can Abbey Laurent get her life back? Or even survive? Will she have sex with Jason Bourne? Colorful characters and solid plotting continue to make this series a pleasure.

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June 30, 2022
Jason Bourne, the former assassin for the American government who lost his memory after nearly being killed, has spent the last year searching Europe for the assassin known as Lennon (last seen in The Bourne Treachery, 2021). After a near miss in Iceland, Bourne is determined to catch up with Lennon in the U.S. But finding the ruthless killer is only one element in Freeman's third Bourne novel. Is Lennon working for a shadowy organization called The Pyramid, and, if so, why has the group sent him to America? In 2020's The Bourne Evolution, Freeman rebooted Robert Ludlum's series, giving the character a new time line and restoring some of the desperation to recover his identity, an early element that was less prominent in Ludlum's later Bourne novels and in those by Eric Van Lustbader. Fans of Freeman's first two Bourne novels will be thrilled with this one, which, in addition to Lennon, also brings back journalist Abby Laurent, who played an important role in Bourne Evolution and is even more in the mix here. An exciting, satisfying thriller.

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