The Bourne Identity

This production epitomizes the best and worst of audiobooks. Take Robert Ludlum's bestselling spy novel, hire storyteller Darren McGavin to read it, delete mammoth chunks of the book to allow it to fit on two cassettes, and then add unnecessary music, and you have this production of THE BOURNE IDENTITY. Darren McGavin knows how to tell a story, and he does his best with what's left of the book, but the abridgment leaves so much out that it's difficult to understand the twists of the plot. For those who want a quick listen, this recording will do. For fans of Ludlum or McGavin, it's like ordering a sandwich and being served only the bread. D.J.S. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine

Widely considered to be among the top spy thrillers ever, this is the first of Ludlum's exciting Bourne trilogy. Written in 1980, it has some amusingly dated details--the spies desperately searching for pay phones in the heat of a chase, for example--but it definitely stands the test of time. Scott Brick upholds his reputation as a master voice of spy thrillers. Brick portrays Jason Bourne's growing confusion and anger as he awakens from a coma to complete amnesia. A bank account number engraved on a microscopic chip embedded in his hip leads him to Zurich, where people try to kill him. Brick portrays Bourne with steely determination and scarcely hidden astonishment as secrets unlock in his brain, and he realizes the terrible truth about his identity. N.M.C. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine