RA Private Office

He wrote big BIG historical novels packed with conspiracies, guns and bodies. (Dead, not sexy). He gave us The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Ultimatum, the Bourne Supremacy, The Gemini Contenders, The Matarese Circle, The Rhinemann Exchange (are you detecting a pattern?). Always a lone hero triumphing against the forces of evil, embodied in shadowy government, intelligence and business elites. Massive plotter, miserable writer. I was a hooked fan for a while when I was younger until one day I was a quarter way through one of his books and said to myself "Damn, this really sucks!" But he proved that you don't need to create believable characters to get rich.