Robert Ludlum Keeps ‘Em in Suspense

It’s a purely unscientific conclusion, but one drawn repeatedly during years of riding commuter trains and lolling on summer beaches: More people are reading Robert Ludlum at any given time than any other writer.

Indeed, more than 200 million copies of his suspense novels are in print around the world, making him a regular on national bestseller lists.

One young reader, slouching on a New York City subway train not long ago, looked up and spotted Ludlum’s “The Matarese Countdown” in front of my face. He sprang up, looked over my shoulder, then contained himself no longer.

Was it Ludlum’s new one? Was it good? What was it about?

Told of this encounter only minutes later, Ludlum himself beamed the smile of a first novelist, though “The Matarese Countdown” is his 21st.

He is 70 years old, a stocky man with a gravelly growl of a voice. He’s been writing novels about international conspiracies and power struggles and really bad guys since he gave up acting and producing plays at age 42. But the initial reaction of his readers (for whom Bantam Books has supplied a confident first printing of 535,000 copies of “Countdown”) still thrills him.

“Oh, sure, it’s almost like the beginning was,” he said. “You’re not quite sure it’s happening. I don’t know, but I happen to like what I do very much. I always think it’s kind of strange that so many people in this world do what they don’t want to do. And I can make a living doing exactly what I want to do, and I think that’s a wonderful blessing. I’m very, very grateful.”

In “The Matarese Countdown,” Ludlum forces out of retirement former CIA operative Brandon Scofield (code name Beowulf Agate), a hero of “The Matarese Circle,” published in 1979. Scofield is living in isolated Caribbean comfort with his crafty wife, Antonia, but he’s needed by the agency once more to thwart the monstrous Matarese, a blood-tied cabal of business titans bent anew on worldwide economic domination.

Not one to disappoint, Ludlum hopscotches his tale from the Costa del Sol to Corsica to London to a Hamptons polo field in the first two dozen pages alone, punctuating the pages with killing after scene-setting killing.

Ludlum said he reached back in his catalog because readers frequently asked whatever happened to the hard-to-forget Beowulf Agate, and because the cunning of the Matarese provided a frame on which to hang a story that seems less improbable the more one reads today’s business pages.

“Somebody once said I’m always looking for the illogically logical theories,” Ludlum recalled between puffs on a chain of cigarettes. “And what with all of these mega-mergers and takeovers and buyouts, hostile and otherwise, it occurred to me that if it goes on to its illogical conclusion, we’re going to have fewer and fewer choices.”

But a preacher against consolidation he is not.

“I do have a point of view, but my first job--conceding the fact that I’m not Tolstoy or anyone like that--is to entertain,” he said. “I’m primarily an entertainer. . . . That’s what I tried to do here.”

Like all his entertainment, “The Matarese Countdown” profits from the occasional input of college chums who went into intelligence work. For example, when Scofield, staying at a CIA safehouse on Chesapeake Bay, receives a hermetically sealed meal prepared at agency headquarters in Langley, Va., it’s because Ludlum once learned of this protective procedure.

“I will call these friends when I’m working on a book,” Ludlum explained. “If they laugh too hard, I think I know where I’m going.

“But there’s nothing I write about that anybody else couldn’t figure out too,” he added. “Of course, for every quarter-pound of fact, there’s three-quarters pound of imagination. It’s just how credible you can make it.”

Ludlum’s plan now is to spend less time writing and more time relaxing in Florida, where he now lives. It’s been two years since his previous novel, and he says it may be longer still before his next one arrives.