#26 in Spy & espionage
The Matarese Circle
- 601
- Pages
- about 11 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“The Matarese Circle” is a sprawling Cold War conspiracy thriller with a dramatic finale. Robert Ludlum forces two rival agents from opposite sides to join forces against a secret cabal that has reached the top of politics and business. Some readers find its six hundred pages too many, though they grant that the ending pays off as pure entertainment. Ludlum returned to the story in a sequel in 1997.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Matarese Circle (1979) is a novel by Robert Ludlum. The story is followed by a 1997 sequel, The Matarese Countdown.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.2 across 51 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 26% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Spy & espionage average of 7.6. That is how 7.5 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 6.9 | 7 | 14% |
| Hardcover | 7.3 | 44 | 86% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Matarese Circle?
It has 601 pages — longer than 92% of the ranked books in Spy & espionage.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Spy & espionage — with scores between 7.5 and 7.8, closest to this book.
