by Robert Ludlum
A good subtitle might be "The Ludlum Inertia," since this latest offering by the master of mega-thrillers is hardly his most original. His new hero is an international lawyer and Vietnam vet who is out to destroy one of those menacing international plots that so often surface in this kind of book. The conspiracy seems to have been cast by James Watt: It is headed by a crippled American, an Israeli Jew, a Nazi, a South African, an Englishman and a sexually perverted Frenchman. They are retired military types who feel they must take over the world because "We—we here—are now the divine intervention on earth." To fight them, the hero heads off on a world tour that would put one of those packaged, 11-capitals-in-three-days vacations to shame. Such control as Ludlum exerted in his previous 10 novels is missing in this one. The Aquitaine Progression just drones on for 647 pages of mayhem. (Random House, $17.95)
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