Ludlum's new master conspiracy [in The Bourne Identity] is the terror network built by Carlos the assassin. Some nice tradecraft around using a Paris couturier as a communications HQ, and a credible background of the CIA's Phoenix assassination programme in Vietnam, but at the centre of the plot is a cunningly-manipulated American counter-assassin, who labours through the book with amnesia. He can't remember who he is, and we are never persuaded to care. (p. 973)

Martin Walker, "SAS, SIS, SOS," in New Statesman (© 1980 The Statesman & Nation Publishing Co. Ltd.), Vol. 99, No. 2571, June 27, 1980, pp. 972-73.∗