Just Finished Reading: Six Days of the Condor by James Grady.

Ronald Malcolm (codename Condor) works for the CIA – not as a smooth, sexy agent fighting the forces of evil but in an office reading thrillers and murder mysteries. His job is to look for possible leaks and good ideas to pass on to his superiors. Ronald is bored and craves excitement. Unfortunately he is about to get his wish. Whilst out buying coffee and cake for the rest of his group a hit-team arrives and silently kills them all. The reason? To cover up a shadowy deal that has up till that point been running smoothly in the very heart of Washington. Unfortunately for Ronald almost everyone he knows and trusted wants him dead before he can figure out what happened. Unfortunately for Ronald even if he can work things out who can he trust to tell?

Aficionado’s of 70’s movies will know this as Three Days of the Condor starring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway. It was certainly an enjoyable movie (though it won’t make my favourites list) and it was an equally enjoyable book. Short and pithy with little obvious padding this was a very creditable first novel by Mr Grady. It contained a goodly amount of tension, a nice does of mystery, and some well handled action scenes. The ‘love interest’ was a bit silly but I quickly forgave him his digression as it didn’t really detract from the storyline overly much. There was some nice characterisation – apart from Ronald himself – in particular the main assassin played by Max Von Sydow in the movie (he even ‘sounded’ like Von Sydow in the book!) All in all a more than reasonable read and a nice change of pace for me.