Robert Ludlum is a master storyteller specialising in intrigue, suspense, and action thrillers full of conspiracies, violence and fast pace, movement, energy and action. Scorpio Illusion has all of these elements and more. Amaya Bajaratt, a western women married to an Arab revolutionary is also an accomplished terrorist. She is beautiful, elusive, and deadly - and she has set in motion a chilling conspiracy that a desperate government cannot stop. After the death of her husband in an encounter with Israeli commandos, she embarks on a mission of revenge.
An unnamed terrorist organisation having taken up a contract sponsored by “scorpios”, assigns the mission of assassinating the American President to this woman terrorist. When she starts putting her action plan together, western intelligence agencies become alerted to the developing conspiracy.
They recruit Tyrell Hawthorne, an ex-naval intelligence officer with impeccable accomplishments to his credit, who had quit the job after the mysterious death of his wife, an innocent victim of the games spies play. Hawthorne single handedly manages to unravel the mystery, trace the plot and the links, thwart the plan, kill the terrorist and save the world from chaos which were engineered by scorpios, the secret organisation. The whole fun is in reading about how he manages all this.
The basic story has lost its suspense since the identity of the assassin, as well as the target and the pursuer are revealed in the first chapter itself, and the outcome too is fairly predictable, but still, the author manages to get the reader glued to the book with fast paced action, multiple layers of intrigue, and interesting situations over a vast backdrop and wider canvass of characters.
The scenes cover a huge landscape ranging from Palestine to Europe, Caribbean, and the US.
Credibility has never been a forte of Ludlum. Every book has a powerful, super secret, underground organisation with unlimited tentacles, unlimited resources, reach, and power, only to be exposed and ultimately destroyed by one man. This book has Scorpios as the secret organisation which Hawthorne manages to defeat and destroy.
Anyway, Ludlum books are enjoyable to read, and this novel too, is an exciting thriller of vintage Ludlum variety, but does not leave a lasting impression as his Bourne series, Parsifal series, and Aquitaine Progression did.
