Jason Bourne Books In Order

Publication Order of Jason Bourne Books

About Jason Bourne:

Jason Bourne is a fictional protagonist of a long series of novels that are written by Robert Ludlum, Eric Van Lustbader and now Brian Freeman. The stories revolve around Jason Bourne, who is a secret agent for an agency known only as Medusa. Stories of Jason Bourne typically involve his combat active missions and spy operations, while often dipping into his troubled backstory that contains terror and many misfortunes.

Backstory

Jason Bourne’s life before Medusa and before spy operations was a nice one; he lived with his wife Dao and their two children, Joshua and Alyssa in Cambodia. However, his entire family was killed in a freak plane crash that left him with nothing or no one. This was what motivated him to join Medusa, an elite Special Forces unit that was covert in its operations and looking for extremely skilled and talented units to train for their missions. He was trained there and known only by his Medusa titled code name, Delta One.

Jason Bourne is not even his real name, but simply one of the many aliases that he uses an an operative under the directives of Medusa. His real name is David Webb, but through the many stories in which he adventures, he his most frequently referred to as Jason Bourne so the alias has become synonymous with the man behind it.

Jason Bourne first became a part of Medusa thanks to his good friend Alexander Conklin, who was a CIA operative at the time and had connections within the Medusa operations. This was during the Vietnam War and so Medusa’s primary aim was to kill important members of North Vietnam’s Viet Cong operations.

Jason Bourne, or Delta One as he is called within the operations at Medusa, has a long and complex storyline involving his time there and the many atrocities that he both witnesses and is forced to commit for the good of his country. Most of what Medusa does are assassinations of high ranking members of the Viet Cong, and through the many stories of Jason Bourne, more is learned about his involvement. Many of the mysteries of his involvement in Medusa rise to understanding through reading the various novels, and part of the great suspense of the storyline comes from learning more and more about Jason Bourne’s past.

Novels

The first three books that detail the life and times of Jason Bourne have all been made into films in recent years. These three books were all written by Robert Ludlum and are very frequently referred to as The Bourne Trilogy.

However, after Robert Ludlum’s death in 2001, a new author stepped in to take over and continue writing stories about Jason Bourne and his operations in Medusa. This author is Eric Van Lustbader, who has subsequently written another seven books about Jason Bourne – over twice as many books as Robert Ludlum ever wrote about him.

1. Identity – in the film version of this it is called The Bourne Identity, but the original novel is simply called Identity. The story starts with Jason Bourne finding himself in the Mediterranean Sea, caught by Italian fisherman. He regains consciousness and is confused about his whereabouts as well as his identity. The only thing that is truly known about him is that he has two bullet wounds in the back – he has clearly been in some kind of violent struggle. The story involves Jason Bourne’s struggle to regain and understanding of his past and try to find out more about his own identity. One of the earlier plot points in this story is when he takes a woman hostage, Marie St. Jacques, who helps him to try and sort out his own identity. She and Bourne are both surprised to discover that he is in fact an assassin for the U.S. Government.

2. Supremacy – just like with the film version of Identity, the film version of this novel is called The Bourne Supremacy, while the original novel is simply Supremacy. The plot of Supremacy is much more dicey than the first novel, showing how much Robert Ludlum had advanced as a novelist in such a short period of time. In Supremacy, Jason Bourne’s defacto side kick, Marie St. Jaques is kidnapped and Jason must fight to find her and save her from her abductors. But who was it? The story only gets more complicated as Jason learns that if it really was a Chinese Drug Lord, and if the phony Jason Bourne that he is forced to find and assassinate is really going to be credited with the assassinations in China, then this could potentially spark a giant, Chinese civil war. Jason Bourne must find Marie, must figure out who her kidnappers are and save her from them, while combatting an undercover operative who has impersonated him and is using the knowledge for dangerous missions that could potentially cause a rift in the Far East so great a civil war could erupt.

3. Ultimatum – the third installment in Robert Ludlum’s trilogy of terror and espionage, Ultimatum a serious villain of the series Carlos the Jackal decides that before he dies he must kill Jason Bourne. Men on their deathbeds are frequently quite committed to their goals, and therefore this sparks a dangerous controversy that could potentially end with Jason Bourne dead. Not just this, but Carlos the Jackal has even bigger plans: destroy a KGB facility where he was originally trained so many years ago. Jason Bourne is forced to team up with the man that turned him on to Medusa in the first place so many years ago, Alexander Conklin. Jason Bourne plans to intercept Carlos the Jackal at the KGB facility and facedown with him to destroy him once and for all. This way he will kill two birds with one stone: protecting himself from the threats of danger from Carlos the Jackal, and simultaneously stopping the wake of terror that is being left in his murderous wake.

After the trilogy of novels by Robert Ludlum, there are a number of additional books by Eric Van Lustbader that continue to tell stories of the adventures and misadventures of Jason Bourne. While the style of the stories and the writing is slightly different with the change of authors, the character that readers have come to know and love stays remarkably the same throughout. This is probably because Jason Bourne is such a realistic character that it is almost as if he has taken on a life of his own.

One Response to “Jason Bourne”

1. jqpublic: 2 years ago

   The early Ludlum books are better than the movies.

   Reply