Just Finished Reading (Again) The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum

I first read thriller fiction writer Robert Ludlum's 1980 novel The Bourne Identity in 2013...never got around to read the entire trilogy, though.  Recently I ran across the same-named 2002 movie starring Matt Damon in the TV listings, so I decided to take the plunge and read all three books, starting by rereading the first one.  In it a young man finds himself shot repeatedly out in the Mediterranean Sea in a boat, and then loses his memory of who he is as well as his past...yet he retains great fighting and espionage skills.  A disgraced expatriate English doctor cares for him and gives him the implant removed from his hip giving an Swiss bank account number...the man after six months of recovery goes that Zurich bank in search of his own identity.  While discovering he is apparently "Jason Bourne" with several million dollars to his account, he is also pursued by gunmen bent on killing him.  He takes as hostage a Canadian woman who is in Zurich for an economics convention...the two have their adventures, which point to Paris as the next logical place.  The background for this story is that of Carlos, an international terrorist/assassin who apparently really existed...Ludlum opened his novel with real newspaper accounts.  As Jason...or whoever he is...gradually learns more about himself, he becomes gravely concerned that he, too, is a terrorist.  His connections with American intelligence become revealed as well as his past leading up to the present crisis.  I felt that the author did a masterful job at presenting his characters...be they good or bad...as complex people, each with their own stories and perspectives.  After finishing it (again), I checked out that 2002 movie from my library and began to watch it, only to discover that it bore very little similarity to the book other than the characters Jason Bourne and Alexander Conklin and that even those two had vastly differently personalities and backgrounds.  Yes, there was a wounded, amnesiac Bourne rescued at sea and Zurich and Paris...American intelligence was involved here, too, but in the movie it was presented as more cutthroat and amoral, not at all like in the book.  So I say that if you haven't experienced The Bourne Identity in either book or movie form, go for the book first.  That's not to say that the acting and action in the movie wasn't excellent and gripping: it's simply a different story.  My plan now, though, is to skip the movie sequels and just stick with Ludlum's books...