Note: There is no call for my
usual LTA, or Ludlum Title Analyzer, because this is one of the few books that
doesn’t follow the classic title formula.
What would a Robert Ludlum novel
be like with all of the conspiracy, but none (or very little) of the
action? It would be like Trevayne. Trevayne is still an expertly crafted
detective story as the self-made hero Andrew Trevayne heads up a Senate subcommittee
to unravel massive malfeasance in government defense contracts, but it’s not
exactly the page turner that most of Ludlum’s novels are. (In case the words “Senate,” “subcommittee,” “malfeasance” and “contracts” didn't already tip you off.) Sometimes it’s easy to get bogged down in
page after page of conversations discussing various views on government
spending, but overall I still found the novel quite compelling. While this post-Watergate diatribe (written
in fury and originally published under the pseudonym of Jonathan Ryder) is quite dated in some
ways, it remains unfortunately applicable today in many others.
Andrew Trevayne is a wealthy and
successful businessman with a loving, devoted wife and two teenage
children. His life is upended when he’s
recruited to chair a new bipartisan Senate subcommittee on unchecked military spending, a
task he initially wants no part of, partly because his own firm is a defense
contractor and partly because he realizes it’s a thankless, no-win
position. But he’s essentially forced to
accept, and as soon as he does bad things start happening to his family. His son is arrested on trumped-up drunk
driving and hit-and-run charges. His daughter is set up
in a drug bust. And his wife is drugged
and very nearly raped while waiting for him in a posh New York hotel. Obviously, someone doesn’t want him reaching
any damaging conclusions in his investigation.
Politically, Trevayne is the
very model of the Independent. I don’t
get the feeling that Ludlum did this so as not to alienate readers on whichever
side, but because the author himself was genuinely disgusted with the two-party
system and with just about everyone in Washington following the Watergate
revelations. Independent or not, the
military are naturally suspicious of this outsider scrutinizing their spending,
afraid he’ll recommend killing programs they see as crucial. The Army assigns a disgraced Major, Paul Bonner,
to be Trevayne’s liaison, but they also task Bonner to spy on his boss for
them. Bonner seems as surprised as the
reader when the two men don’t fall neatly into the expected hawk and dove
stereotypes (a relationship Ludlum attempted much more directly in another
pseudonymous novel of the same era, the overtly comedic Road to Gandolfo, with
its co-heroes Hawk and Dev). The issues
that Trevayne is investigating and Ludlum is exploring are complex ones, and
hence the relationship between these two men proves complex as well—and
ultimately one of the things that makes the novel so rewarding.
The author is less successful at
nuance when it comes to Trevayne’s teenage children. I appreciated that he wanted to get the
younger point of view into his story at a time when youth movements and
anti-war protests were an undeniable force in American politics, but I wish he
hadn’t attempted to capture what he saw as the youth “voice” as well. Sure, some of the terms like “far out” and
“with it” seem rote today because they’re so dated, but I have a feeling that
actual teens of the time didn’t speak even then in quite the way Ludlum has
them speak, which sounds decidedly more like a middle-aged man trying to write
for a youth demographic. (Sort of like
when Paris goes undercover as a hippie student on Mission: Impossible.)
Some Ludlum readers complain
about the comparative lack of action in Trevayne. It’s true that the novel falls far short of
the explosion and gunshot quotient we expect of the author, but it’s no worse
off for that. It still manages to feel
undeniably and gloriously Ludlum even without those elements. (And when they do come, they have more impact
in this kind of story.) I was completely
drawn into the procedural elements of Trevayne’s committee’s investigation, and
found them every bit as compelling as the car chases and shootouts I’m more
used to from the author.
While short on car chases,
Trevayne still packs all the plot twists readers expect from Robert
Ludlum. The political intrigue is
genuinely engrossing, and many of the twists (which come fast and furious in
the book’s final third) just as genuinely surprising. In my opinion, the author stopped one twist
short though. Here I am going to discuss
the ending of the book in broad strokes, but perhaps not broad enough if you’re
about to read the book yourself, so if you’re particularly concerned with
potential spoilers you may wish to skip the rest of this paragraph. Not all of Ludlum’s novels end happily, and a
few pack some final surprises calculated to leave the reader alarmed or stirred
to political action—or at least awareness. But for a moment toward this novel’s
conclusion, I actually thought the author might go even further in that
direction than ever before and have his hero actually become the very thing he’d
spent the course of the story crusading against. I thought Trevayne might fully succumb to the
Dark Side, to speak in Star Wars
terms. Had he, Trevayne might
pack enough satirical punch to be regarded as a subversive classic. Instead, Ludlum pulls his punches just a bit
at the finale. The conclusion is still
designed to leave readers unsettled, and the character is forced to compromise
but allowed to maintain the integrity of his convictions. Perhaps I’m happier that way as a reader. The conclusion is satisfying and the book
completely works as a thriller, the details of its complex plot destined to
become murky in my overall positive memories of the book. Had it gone that other direction, I probably
would have been pissed off at end and tempted to hurl the paperback across the
room. But days, weeks, and months later,
it would have stuck with me and grown in import in my mind. Of course it’s unfair to criticize the author
too much for what he doesn’t do. For
what he does do, he accomplishes very successfully.
Trevayne is a bit of an oddity
in the Ludlum oeuvre, from its non-standard title to its pseudonymous origins
to its comparative lack of action to its atypically political bent. But all of the author’s favorite themes are
present and accounted for, as are his patented labyrinthine plot construction
and myriad twists and turns. It’s an
interesting—and ultimately quite successful—experiment, and should be required
reading for the author’s fans.
The Ludlum Dossier
Read my book review of The Bourne Ultimatum (1990) here.
Read my book review of The Parsifal Mosaic (1982) here.
Read my DVD review of The Holcroft Covenant (1986) here.
Read my book review of The Janson Directive (2002) here.
Read my book review of The Bourne Supremacy (1986) here.
Read my book review of The Holcroft Covenant (1978) here.
Read my book review of The Sigma Protocol (2001) here.
Read my book review of The Bourne Identity (1980) here.
