The classic spy thriller about corruption in the CIA that inspired the hit film and TV show: “A master of intrigue” (John Grisham). Sandwiches are a part of Ronald Malcolm’s every day, but one just saved his life. On the day that gunmen pay a visit to the American Literary Historical Society, he’s out at lunch. The society is actually a backwater of the Central Intelligence Agency, where Malcolm … Agency, where Malcolm and a few other bookworms comb mystery novels for clues that might unlock real life diplomatic questions. One of his colleagues has learned something he wasn’t meant to know. A sinister conspiracy has penetrated the CIA, and the gunmen are its representatives. They massacre the office, and only learn later of Malcolm—a loose end that needs to be dealt with.
Malcolm—codename Condor—calls his handlers at the agency, hoping for a safe haven, instead drawing another attempt on his life. With no one left to trust he goes on the run. But like it or not, Malcolm is the only person who can root out the corruption at the highest levels of the CIA.
This “chilling novel of top security gone berserk” earned James Grady his reputation as a Grand Master of the spy thriller, inspiring legions of imitators as well as the classic Sydney Pollack film Three Days of the Condor and the new TV series Condor featuring Max Irons, Mira Sorvino, and Brendan Fraser (Library Journal).
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This Kindle book started with a wordy preface concerning government clandestine agency s from around the world. The actual story didn’t begin til around page 10 (17 % of the book, according to the Kindle graph). But once it started, it was a very good read !
Great CIA-based story/
I saw the movie “Three Days of the Condor,” with Redford and Faye Dunaway and the great Max Von Sydow long before I ever read the book, but the book does such a great job of filling in the details and highlighting the stakes of the story that you owe it to yourself to check it out if you’re a fan of the film at all. Or even if you’ve never seen the movie and just love thrillers in which an Everyman gets thrown out of his element into a life or death game of cat and mouse with the shadowy forces we’ve always believed lurk just behind the facade of respectable government. A great read.
I’m generally not a big fan of spy thrillers, but I wanted to read this one because so many fans of the genre consider it a classic. The plot itself was okay, but the writing and characterization left a lot to be desired.
I think much of the book’s initial success came from it being the right story at the right time. At bottom, it’s a conspiracy novel exposing some of shadier operations of powerful governments, and the lengths to which those governments will go to cover up their crimes.
The author had studied journalism in college, and later worked as a journalist in DC. You can see the effect of his journalistic training in his writing, which favors exposition and telling over immersing the reader in the action. That has its pluses and minuses.
I appreciate concise exposition, and some descriptions of the CIA’s activities and procedures were fascinating. On the other hand, part of the lure of the thriller genre is the feeling of experiencing the action in real time with the protagonist. You don’t get that as much as you’d hope when the author is constantly explaining things to you.
The cat and mouse game is pretty good, with the overmatched protagonist surviving by wits, grit, and luck. The story has some sections that are hard to swallow, including some phone calls where the main character uses unconvincing stories to trick impossibly gullible clerks into divulging sensitive information.
The main character even abducts a woman at gunpoint and through some charm that is entirely invisible to the reader, gains her confidence, sleeps with her, and convinces her to flee with him even though she knows he’s being pursued by trained killers who will slaughter anyone he happens to be with.
I get that the early seventies was a more freewheeling era. This was the first generation to come of age with birth control, AIDS didn’t exist yet, and there was a general sexual openness now that men and women could enjoy themselves without fear of pregnancy, commitment, or social stigma.
Still, this woman was healthy and attractive and she had a job. She could have done better than a shady guy on the run who pulled her out of a diner at gunpoint and made her cook him dinner.
Oh well. As the romance genre is female fantasy, thrillers are male fantasy. If the main character needs some action, he’s going to get it without having to earn it.
For me, the funnest part of reading this was seeing Washington, DC in 1974. For the most part, Grady uses actual places. His agent, Condor, is in and out of Hot Shoppes restaurants in every other chapter. Anyone who lived in DC before 1980 remembers those. Sunny’s Surplus, where Condor goes to buy a change of clothes is another icon everyone from that era would remember.
Young readers picking up this book today with no cultural context probably would not be overwhelmed, but that may be due in part to the fact that Condor provides an archetypal outline of the modern spy thriller that so many subsequent authors have adopted and refined.
It’s still a decent read, if you’re primarily interested in plot-driven stories and aren’t too picky about characters and writing style. One of the author’s primary devices for building tension is presenting scenes in which the reader has a vague sense of who’s in power and what’s at stake, but the reader doesn’t know the true position of the scene’s characters.
We see two men plotting, but we don’t know which side they’re on. We know there’s a traitor, but we don’t know if it’s the guy talking or the guy being talked about. We’re dropped into a meeting, and we’re not sure if the men making the plans want to kill the main character or save him.
The author gets a lot of mileage out of that device, and it works well because he executes it well. It works well in film too, and has been used in almost every thriller from the 1970s on because it’s very effective.
This is a real stinker!!!! Movie FAR better. First hundred pages were NOT part of book. Waste of time.
Loved it!
Better than movie
I have seen the movie version several times as it is one of my favorites. The book as so often happens is even better than the movie. I was a little surprised at how well it has weathered the years since being written. It is an exceptionally well-written story. I highly recommend it.
A realistic, believable, page turner. A book you don’t want to put down.
An original and entertaining yarn