The Ludlum identity: how a bestselling author was Bourne again

New York, July 2006. The dark, furious sky swelled overhead. Beneath its foreboding gloom, a man walked anxiously, clutching to his chest a crisp manila envelope. He crossed the sidewalk, and entered the five-storey brownstone. It was freezing, and the icy air caused his fingers to throb. He lurched nervously across the deserted lobby to the elevator, and, emerging three floors later from the dimly lit metal box, entered the party in full swing across the hall.

He had committed the description of the agent to memory and looked around discreetly, avoiding any direct eye contact, before making his move. Picking up a cocktail from a silver tray on a low, smoked-glass coffee table, he could just make out the faces of the guests through the haze of paranoia that had descended like a thick fog.

He caught sight of a broad-shouldered man in the corner. He moved towards him. It was too late to abort his mission. There could be no turning back now. "Have you got the manuscript?" the second man asked, eyebrows knitting tightly together in concentration. He nodded, handing over the manila envelope. "I've written it exactly as you requested." The agent tore open the flap and peered at the first page: it was headed with the words "The Arctic Event"... and there, printed beneath, was a single name: "Robert Ludlum".

"Perfect," said the agent, his brows visibly loosening. All the pieces of the plan were falling into place. Ludlum had been dead for five years, but the pact between the two men would protect the power and potency of his legacy. It must – for tens of millions of dollars were at stake...

Mystery. Conspiracy. Identity. If a book were to tell the story of Robert Ludlum, these would be its themes. A successful actor and theatre producer who turned his hand to popular fiction, Ludlum practically cornered the market in dense, paranoid, meticulously researched thrillers for 30 years. By the time of his death in 2001, he had sold 210 million books – a figure only exceeded by JK Rowling. This summer, the hottest property at the cinema box office is likely to be The Bourne Ultimatum, the third instalment of a $500m-grossing movie franchise based on Ludlum's best-known character, directed by United 93's Paul Greengrass and starring Matt Damon as an amnesiac spy.

Yet for all the sales figures and superlatives, it is somehow fitting that a novelist who specialised in complex conspiracy theories and international espionage should have left behind a conundrum to baffle even Bourne himself. In the years since his death, 12 new works bearing his name have hit the bookshelves and beach-towels of the world. None was penned by Ludlum himself – and at least three have not been credited to any other writer. These include The Bancroft Strategy, published last year, which sold 102,000 copies in hardback alone. Like Bourne, whose life after death underscores the basis of the film trilogy, so too has his creator found a new identity in his afterlife.

The truth behind how Ludlum achieved immortality is elusive. During his lifetime, Ludlum surrounded himself with a tight circle of associates – those from the worlds of theatre and publishing, and other authors – who have remained intensely loyal to the memory of the modest-living multimillionaire. His estate is similarly evasive about claims that an army of secretive ghost-writers is producing books under the Ludlum name. What is clear is that Ludlum's final wish, for his work to live on beyond his death, has been achieved. His extraordinary productivity has extended well into the afterlife. Like Ernest Hemingway, whose estate issued several books after his suicide, Ludlum – whose hyperbolic style is still adored by hungry fans around the world – appears to speak from beyond the grave.

***

Ludlum was born in New York in 1927, growing up in New Jersey before being educated privately at the Cheshire Academy, Connecticut. He told friends that he never really considered New Jersey his home after being sent away to boarding school in a different state, and would while away the homesick evenings with his head in a book. "I think a lot of people found they had to read, and I found myself wanting to read things like Thomas Hardy," he said of the period. "I never thought I would be a writer." After school he spent a spell in the Marine Corps, went to university, and married the actress Mary Ryducha.

By the 1950s he was working as a stage and television actor, before becoming a producer at the North Jersey Playhouse. At that time, well into his thirties, Ludlum was known for mingling with the likes of Alan Alda (best known as Hawkeye in the television series M*A*S*H) and Shelley Winters, who once travelled across the Hudson river to star in one of his productions. But after producing 300 plays, Ludlum decided to turn his hand to writing. His first work, The Scarlatti Inheritance, a tale about Nazis and international financiers, became a template for the hyperbolic, paranoid style that would govern his writing. Later, he financed his writing with voice-over work. "I never felt I had time or inclination to take that gamble, to write. But I became bored with the theatre – it was real estate. I decided to take the plunge," he said. "I had a few voice-overs going. And morally that is one step below theft."

At this point he embarked on a professional relationship that would become the cornerstone of his career: his first meeting with New York agent Henry Morrison. Morrison remembers his first encounter with Ludlum vividly. "In 1967 the publisher Don Bensen called me up and said a friend of a friend of his had written a spy thriller," he says, in his thick New York brogue. "This publisher didn't do spy novels. He said I could sell it and make a quick commission." Morrison read the 1,100-page manuscript over the weekend, liked it, and met an anxious Ludlum for lunch in New York. "He was very enthusiastic, he was really anxious to become a published author as he had spent two years writing the book. First-time authors are anxious to have someone approve their work." Thirteen rejections later, Ludlum found a publisher, and eventually success. After a significant rewrite, and a huge cut in the number of pages, The Scarlatti Inheritance became a massive international hit.

Morrison describes Ludlum as a commanding figure, of medium height with broad shoulders and with a mellifluous baritone polished through the voice-over work. "It wasn't a British stage voice, but it was wonderful," Morrison continues. "If you ever heard it you would remember it for the rest of your life. He was a cheerful kind of personality." Morrison describes Ludlum as a modest man with a penchant for gadgets, who was proud to own one of the very first carphones in the Eighties.

From the mid-1970s, Ludlum became a full-time writer. From Leonia, New Jersey, the Ludlums moved to Long Island, where they bought a 200-year-old farmhouse, and kept a second home in Florida. With the whole day at his disposal, Ludlum's routine was sacrosanct. Wherever he was in the world he would follow the same carefully crafted writing ritual. Each day he would rise, walk the dog, make coffee and then read The New York Times. He would then sit down to write all morning, using a pad and pencil, before taking a break at noon. After lunch, he would resume work until the early evening. At the end of the day he would rip out pages from his pad that he drafted over the previous few days and then rework them. He worked like this, seven days a week, "for many years", according to Morrison. Even on holiday he would never be without pencil and pad. He was widely travelled and his favourite destination was Paris. Close friends remember a time when he flew to London to undertake publicity for his latest novel, and managed to write two chapters of a future book between engagements. "It was a very disciplined approach to writing. He did it every day and he managed to complete a great number of books in his lifetime," said Morrison. Indeed, Ludlum produced more than 20 novels before his death. When not writing, he was reading – non-fiction, particularly history and politics, along with Dickens, his favourite novelist.

Ludlum's best-known creation was Jason Bourne, a man first encountered in The Bourne Identity (1980), when he is found floating in the sea by a trawler off the coast of France. Bourne wakes with a severe case of amnesia, and the book follows his progress in trying to discover his identity, as well as his ultimate mission to kill the master-terrorist Carlos the Jackal. It epitomised the style of Ludlum's books, which paid great attention to detail. But his methods of research are shrouded in uncertainty. Some believe all his material was gathered through newspapers and magazines – his favourites were The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek and Time – but others strongly maintain that Ludlum would check information with contacts in the secret services. He was certainly thorough, at one point travelling to Rome to take over 300 photographs that he would later use to inform his writing.

Jason Bourne's situation was something that won him popularity with his fans. "Everybody identified with loss of identity," says Morrison. "Most people understand that if you lose your memory, you lose yourself."

Beyond Bourne, Ludlum's books also painted pictures of dubious multinational corporations with shadowy agendas, often involving world domination, or re-engineering the international balance of power. "He was aware of how the world was changing and his feeling was that, as more power came into hands of fewer people, it was a bad thing for the populist agenda," says Morrison. "That's not a platform. It's simply an astute observation. He had strong political beliefs." His final novel, The Prometheus Deception (2000) was his most prophetic. The plot describes how a series of terrorist attacks are used in an international conspiracy to restrict civil rights and to increase electronic surveillance on individuals.

Yet, in 1991, when the author began to experience heart trouble and had a quadruple bypass, he had begun to make preparations for his literary legacy. "One day we were talking about what would happen when he was gone. He said, 'I don't want my name to disappear. I've spent 30 years writing books and building an audience,'" explains Morrison.

Ludlum died of a heart attack on 12 March 2001, in Naples, Florida. Seven months later he published his next novel.

***

Since his death in 2001, Ludlum's estate has maintained a consistent cover story. It claims to operate like a film studio, presenting old books completed by other writers or new ones in which Ludlum is credited along with the new author. Despite this, a number of mysterious figures remain in the shadows.

While some Ludlum books, such as The Bourne Betrayal, by thriller writer Eric Van Lustbader, are clearly written in association with a named author, an air of intense mystery surrounds others. In the case of The Bancroft Strategy, Morrison claims he himself polished Ludlum's unfinished work, but others are more sceptical. A "note" at the beginning of many other books allows for a more conspiratorial interpretation. It reads: "Since his death, the Estate of Robert Ludlum has worked with a carefully selected author and editor to prepare and edit this work for publication."

This author's identity is seemingly being kept secret in order to preserve the commercial interests of the estate. "People expect something from a Robert Ludlum book, and if we can publish Ludlum books for the next 50 years and satisfy readers, we will," confirmed Jeffrey Weiner, the estate's executor. When Morrison is challenged about the identity of the Bancroft ghostwriter, he remains tight-lipped. "The writer wishes to remain anonymous," he says. The agent will not even say which other books the ghostwriter may have worked on. "No, I can't say because the writer was a friend of Bob's and did it as a favour. He said: 'I'm doing this because I like Bob a lot and I think it should be published as a Robert Ludlum novel,' which makes sense." Other writers who are known to have worked on Ludlum novels are similarly vague. "If I knew who they all were I wouldn't be able to tell you anyway," said one.

The estate instead shifts focus on to those who have been named collaborators with Ludlum, although even in their case, it is not always made clear that Ludlum is dead. Even Van Lustbader, who lengthened the troubled double life of Bourne, found that on the cover of the latest Bourne book, The Bourne Betrayal, Ludlum's name is twice as tall as his own. He only agreed to do the work if his name was on there, also stipulating that he be able to write the book in his own style (which is uncannily similar to Ludlum's anyway). Luckily, the two authors had met, and bonded over their mutual love of fast-paced thrillers.

Van Lustbader, like Ludlum, is a client of Morrison's and was recruited to refresh the Bourne books after the success that Matt Damon had in playing the character in 2002 film, The Bourne Identity. He describes the process by which he became one of Ludlum's ghosts.

Van Lustbader met Ludlum at one of Morrison's New York parties. "Henry would have parties for his clients because he believed it would be good to get them together to talk shop. In 1980 I met Bob. It was a watershed year for both of us – my first bestseller [The Ninja] came out and the first Bourne had just come out." The pair immediately got to together and talked about the "craft" of their profession.

They talked endlessly about characterisation and plot and how to create a scenario. "Each part of book is like a rollercoaster, where the next part is higher than the previous one," explains Van Lustbader. "I realised that we were the only two contemporary thriller writers writing books with very strong characters." He adds that Ludlum could be very curt and contemptuous, "but if you were a friend you were a friend for life and he would do anything for you. He and I are into very visceral writing. There's a sine wave to everything in the world, like stock markets, everything, and Bob and I saw that in a holistic way. We were also into reversals, where you expect one thing and another happens. He was brilliant at that. We would also talk about how formulaic most modern-day thrillers were and he was so contemptuous of them. These characters come from the depths. If you talked to Beethoven about where he created his music from I don't think he'd know and I don't think Bob could tell you either."

After Ludlum's death, Weiner suggested to Van Lustbader that he write a Bourne novel. The plot came to him while he was in the shower, and the book has already sold 280,000 copies. It is currently number eight on The New York Times' hardcover bestseller list. Like Ludlum, Van Lustbader claims to have sources within the intelligence services.

Ludlum never met James Cobb, another ghostwriter recruited to retain the Ludlum legacy. Like Van Lustbader he was approached by Morrison, again his agent, and asked if he had any possible "Covert-One" plots (another Ludlum series). He had, and he produced Arctic Event, the latest in the series, last year. He claimed to have no Ludlum notes on which to work in order to produce the book. "You can't beat another author's style," says Cobb, talking from Washington State. "What I have done with Arctic Event is try to take his concepts and characters and try to represent them in a way acceptable to his fans. I would be doing him a disservice to mimic him." The only instruction he received from the estate was to give Jon Smith a new love interest.

Meanwhile, the identity of the unnamed author remains classified information. How many books did he rewrite? How much of them did he shape? All this is unknown, but Morrison maintains that there are other unfinished works waiting in a safe to be scrubbed into shape. He insists that there is no team of ghostwriters "in a bunker" crafting thrillers in Ludlum's name.

So how many more authors will assume the mantle? According to Morrison the future is uncertain, although he may well continue to tighten existing work, along with Ludlum's editor at St Martin's Press, Keith Kahla. And they will continue to rely on the likes of Cobb, who says: "I do not pretend to be Robert Ludlum. That would not be fair to him and it would not be fair to me. I just hope [my work] will satisfy readers." They will be the final judge and jury; even if we don't know the name of the man sitting in the dock.

The Bourne Ultimatum opens on 16 August

Spy hard: Ludlum's books

The Matarese Circle

An organisation created in the early 1900s in Corsica, no one really knows the true face or aim of The Matarese Circle, only that it must be stopped. Terrifying killers, their power could plunge the world into chaos and destruction. Only two rival spies can stop them: Brandon Scofield, CIA, the West's most professional assassin, and Vasili Taleniekov, former KGB, now wanted by the Politburo. They share a genius for espionage, as well as a life of terror and explosive violence.

The Bourne Identity

An amnesiac is found floating in the Mediterranean, peppered with bullet wounds. The doctor treating him finds a message surgically embedded in his hip that contains details of a Swiss bank account. The wounded man, Jason Bourne, must discover who he is and why so many people, including a hired assassin and a group of CIA agents, are trying to kill him.

The Icarus Agenda

Congressman Evan Kendrick, a former building contractor in the Middle East, is close friends with the Sultan of Oman. When the US Embassy in Muscat is taken by terrorists, he returns undercover to Oman to unmask a far-reaching terrorist network aimed at controlling the entire Middle East.

The Holcroft Covenant

Noel Holcroft is a New York architect and, secretly, the son of Heinrich Clausen, Hitler's chief economic advisor. His quiet life is shattered when he is contacted by the Grande Banque de Genève about his father's will. He must contact the children of two of his father's friends to redistribute millions of dollars of Nazi money held in a Zurich bank account to the descendants of Holocaust victims. But ranged against him are the remnants of the Third Reich: the sinister children of Projekt Sonnenkinder.

The Apocalypse Watch

After three years deep under cover, US agent Harry Latham has penetrated the fortress-like mountain hideaway of the neo-Nazi group Brotherhood of the Watch. Then, on the eve of his most spectacular success, he disappears. Drew Latham, a consular officer at the American Embassy in Paris, is frantic to discover his older brother's fate. The search for the truth about Harry plunges Drew into a labyrinth of deceit and death. Whoever gets out alive holds the fate of the free world in their hands.

The Osterman Weekend

In a secret room in Washington, DC, John Tanner is asked to stake his life – and those of his wife and children – on a gamble whose goals and risks no one will fully reveal to him. In a small suburban town, friends, neighbours, indeed everyone and anyone could be part of a monstrous conspiracy of international evil. And at stake is the very existence of America.

The Prometheus Deception

Nicholas Bryson spent years as a deep cover operative for the secret intelligence group, The Directorate. After a disastrous mission, Bryson was retired and given a new identity. Now, years later, his cover is cracked and Bryson learns The Directorate was not what it claimed – that he was, in fact, a pawn being used against his country's interests. The Directorate is headed for a dangerous endgame, and the CIA recruits Bryson to stop it. But after years on the sidelines, Bryson's field skills are rusty, his contacts unreliable, his instincts suspect, and he no longer knows who to trust.

The Sigma Protocol(published posthumously)

American investment banker Ben Hartman, son of the legendary Max Hartman, who built a financial empire up from next to nothing, is on holiday in Switzerland when he meets a childhood friend who promptly tries to kill him. Hartman narrowly survives, and wakes up to discover that the body of his friend and all evidence of the confrontation has disappeared. Meanwhile, Anna Navarro, a US government agent, is sent to look into a string of deaths connected only by one thing: a secret file linked to the CIA, codenamed Sigma.

The Ambler Warning (published posthumously)

On distant Parrish Island, off the coast of Virginia, lies a government-run psychiatric facility for former intelligence employees. Hal Ambler, a former consular operations agent, is one of these patients, considered such a risk to divulge secrets of state that they are kept heavily medicated and guarded. But there's one critical difference between Ambler and the other patients: Ambler isn't crazy. Now he must discover how to escape the facility, who put him there, the truth of who he was – and why someone is willing to risk everything to see him dead.

Julia Stuart

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