Six Days of the Condor

Rating:
Summary: Run Condor run
Review: Condor is the code name for an employee of the CIA. His mission is to read, read everything he can to see if there are any subversive codes being posted in innocuous looking literature.

He discovers that the number of packages shipped to his location do not match the bill of lading. He brings this to the attention of his superiors.

One day he leaves by an un-recorded unauthorized back door for lunch. On returning he finds everyone dead.

Who did this and who can he trust? To survive he must use his wits and what he has learned from his reading.

A movie "Three days of the Condor" is based on this book, which is really first in a series of books, sort of like the James Bond series. Naturally being film media the story needed cutting down to size, hence three days instead of six. Robert Redford has to squeeze James Grady's "Six Days of the Condor" into the Redford mold. The book plot of drugs and Viet Nam are out. Redford's substitute plot of oil and Arabs is in. Bad guys differ. Great acting, great actors and a few faux pas, such as if they knew there was a back door to the location, don't you think it would be watched? In the movie Tina Chen (Janice) can be seen again in "Paper Man (1971)".

Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: I first read this book in High School and got caught up in it. I have read it a second time and still think its great. I didn't care for the movie all that much. The book is written very graphically and it kept me interested the whole way. I read it as an assignment for a book report the first time and loved it. The second time was just for fun. There are only a few books that I have read cover to cover that I thought were worth it. This was one of them.

Rating:
Summary: Superb Spy Thriller!
Review: I first read this suspense and spy novel sometime in the mid-1970s, while living in Utah and working for the federal government. The picture it paints of a murderous renegade network operating within the Central Intelligence Agency is both frightening and plausible, and is delivered by author James Grady in a tight, well-developed thread of events that spins way out of control as the protagonist tries to figure out who is at the center of the bloody plot and why he and his cohorts at a special studies institute sponsored by the Agency are targets. This book is extremely well written!

The level of paranoia as well as the multiple levels of deceit and deception described in the book seemed outlandish at the time, but given the temper of the times, it somehow seemed much more plausible in the backwash of Watergate and all that was revealed about the machinations of the so-called "invisible government" then. The hero's ability to parse together the facts and learn and adapt as he progresses makes the novel work especially well, and one can relate to his growing frustration as he realizes there just may not be any way out alive. And between the margins of the paragraphs are some intriguing questions regarding the role of secrecy in an open and supposedly democratic society that add a measure of intellectual acumen and "gravitas" to the tale.

So popular was this novel in the bookstores that very quickly after it was turned into a screenplay and filmed as a revised story under the title "Three Days Of The Condor" starring Robert Redford, Fay Dunaway, and Cliff Robertson. This novel makes an absorbing way to escape the humdrum of everyday life with a stunning tale of murder, mayhem, and betrayal. I highly recommend this book. Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: Good pace and likeable character
Review: This book should be considered a classic. Pace is breathtaking from start to finish. If you've seen the movie then you can't help but picture the main character as Robert Redford. Good spy thriller with a cool take on the subject: the main character is not a know-it-all trained spy but a book mole who's entangled in a conspiracy so great he's bound to loose... or is he? Great, fast summer read.