Damn you, Robert!!!

Sometimes a great read can be ruined by a horrible/sappy ending.

I recently finished Ludlum's "The Cry of the Halidon", not one of his best works but still good. Anyways, back to the topic, the book is filled with action, suspense and what you would normally expect from Ludlum. But this is not a book review!

Spoiler Warning!!!

So towards the end of the book, our hero leads his ragtag team of researchers through the forest, trying to narrowly avoid death. They set up their gameplan, each one of them will sneak up on the people sent out to kill them to what will become one very fast, not so suspensful ending.

That is not the ending I am speaking of, I am talking about this:

"They walked on the green lawn in front of the cottage that was a villa and looked out the sea. A white sheet of ocean spray burst up from the coral rock and appeared suspended, the pitch-blue waters of the carribean serving as the backdrop, not a source. The spray cascaded forward and downward and then receeded back over the crevices that formed the coral overlay. It became ocean again, at one with its source; another form of beauty.
Alison took McAuliff's hand.
They were free."

Holy Shit! Was I just reading a Judith McNaught/Danielle Steel novel? It's like Ludlum said to himself, "Damn, got all these flowery words I forgot to use. I know! I'll spend them all in this one tiny paragraph!". The supreme level of sap contained in that ending could even overtake the most sappiest of all the sappiest things ever devised! Its just so weird to see an ending like that after reading all the brutal deaths in this book. One I remember went something like, the protagonist clutches his enemy by the throat, after some body blows, he then takes a rock and smashes it in the guy's mouth and drowns him in the mud! Drowns him in the fucking mud! And then I'm treated to this ending?! Ludlum could've been less sappy when he wrote that. I just hope "The Chancellor Manuscript" has something better.