Robert Ludlum he ain't!

As a reader, I hate to give up on a book. In some books the storyline takes a while to build up, or the characters don't really become real for a bit. Even though I don't like that, I do persevere because I know things could get better. I could probably count on my fingers the number of books I've EVER started and then abandoned before I finished.

Well, I can now add "The Moscow Vector" to that list. Patrick Larkin is clearly trying to follow the Ludlum formula, but it's not an easy thing to do without the Ludlum talent! Larkin's writing is so self-conscious it intrudes into the reading process, which is not good. There's a difference between language that helps set a scene, and a bunch of words that just sound as if someone found them in a Thesaurus.

Another problem for Larkin is the vaunted Ludlum way of beginning in one location, such as Moscow, and telling just enough of a story to get the reader hooked, and then stopping, and starting another story in, say, London. He jumps around among these various stories and places, and eventually there's a thread that pulls the whole novel together in the end. The trouble is, that's a hard thing to pull off unless you are truly talented, as Ludlum was.

I've read about a quarter of the book, and honestly I couldn't really tell you much about it because my mind keeps wandering as I try to read. Rather than being intrigued, I'm just bored. So after using up three nights of my recreational reading time, I'm afraid I'm giving up on this one. I've also made a resolution: never buy another book with Robert Ludlum's name on it unless it was written by Robert Ludlum!