The Short Takes

Starred review from February 18, 2019
The five previously published short stories and one original novella in Grady’s superb collection will please fans of the spy known as Condor, who first appeared in the 1974 bestseller Six Days of the Condor. An opening essay discusses Condor’s origins and how Grady, in his mid-20s, dealt with early success as a writer. The first story, “Condor.net,” published in 2005, presents a Condor who isn’t the original CIA spy, though the ending is linked to the novella, “Russian Roulette of the Condor,” in which Condor and his girlfriend go on the run from a mysterious man with a cane. “Caged Daze of the Condor” describes the overarching plot point of the recent Condor zeitgeist: he has been incarcerated for years in a secret CIA insane asylum. In the rest of the stories and the novella, Condor is out of the asylum and again working for the CIA, dealing with 21st-century threats from Russians and other adversaries. Grady’s writing has changed dramatically over the years, evolving into a literary, impressionistic style that will unbalance some readers, but is a perfect fit for the aging, unhinged, yet still-lethal Condor. This is an author writing at the top of his, or anyone else’s, game. Agent: David Hale Smith, Inkwell Management.

Starred review from March 15, 2019
It's hard to believe, but Grady's influential political thriller Six Days of the Condor (which became the hit movie Three Days of the Condor) was published more than 40 years ago. After two recent novel-length sequels?Last Days of the Condor (2015) and Next Day of the Condor (2015)?and hot on the heels of the TV series Condor, we get this collection of shorter works featuring the clandestine CIA operative code-named Condor. And it's important to note that it is a code name; the first story in the book establishes that the protagonist is at least the third operative to be called Condor. This isn't a bunch of stories about the same guy, 40-odd years later; they're about a new guy, in a new era, facing new (but familiar) threats. Readers familiar with Grady's original novel will note that his writing style has matured (he was in his mid-twenties when he published Six Days), and that his ability to spin a believable, intense yarn is just as strong as it ever was. Newcomers will be hooked by the stories' realistic feel and their parallels to real-life events. Not just a way to make a few bucks off the memory of a famous character, this is a strong and memorable short-fiction collection that stands on its own two feet and has some important new things to say about the modern state of political paranoia.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)