Six Days of the Condor - James Grady

   1974; 311 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Espionage; Conspiracy Thriller; Suspense; Movie Tie-in.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

 

    Welcome to the Washington D.C. branch of the American Literary Historical Society!  You can tell by its name that its purpose in life is . . . um . . . something literary, I suppose.  Or historical, maybe.  That name seems a bit vague.

 

    Actually, the Society is a CIA front for one of its very unimportant branches.  Its function is to “keep track of all espionage and related acts recorded in literature.”  In other words, its agents sit around and read spy thrillers and murder mysteries, checking to see if any author out there has written a plot with details about espionage that are too close for comfort to how the CIA conducts its business.

 

    All in all, it’s a pretty tame assignment.  Yet today, some person or persons walked in through the front doors of the American Literary Historical Society and shot everybody in the department to death.

 

     Well, not quite everybody.  One member of the group had the good fortune of being out of the office, picking up lunch for the rest of his coworkers.  Ronald Malcolm.  Now all sorts of people, some CIA, others of unknown loyalties, would like to bring Malcom in for questioning.

 

    Or kill him.

 

What’s To Like...

    James Grady’s Six Days of the Condor is the basis for the 1975 blockbuster political-thriller film Three Days of the Condor, although “loosely based” would be a more apt description, as evidenced by the length of the book’s titular chase scene being cut in half.

 

    Malcolm’s chances of staying alive are slim.  The reader may know that Malcolm has had a narrow escape from death, but his employer, the CIA, doesn’t.  They quickly realize they have a turncoat in their midst, and the Number One suspect is that oh-so-lucky employee who just happened to be out of the office when the assassins struck.  Meanwhile, the baddies too learn they’ve overlooked a victim, and are determined to correct that oversight.  Tell me, Malcolm, where do you hide when everybody is after you?

 

    The storytelling is spellbinding.  The reader knows that everything is going to turn out okay, but the bad guys are just as resourceful as the good guys, and logic tells us that a bookish nerd will not fare well against well-armed and highly-trained gunmen.  The technical details felt well-researched, especially when it came to lethal firearms.

 

    Six Days of the Condor was published in 1974, and it was fun to re-experience that era.  At one point, Malcom avails himself to a “battered Corvair”, which I happened to have one of back then, and in battered condition as well.  Later, Malcolm hides out at a “homosexual hangout”, which the author informs us can also be called a “gay” bar.  Soon afterward, he hitches a ride with a driver looking for nubile girls who will do anything, and he means anything for some marijuana.  Even later, the action takes place at an airport, where security is so lax that evidently anyone and everyone can enter with a handgun hidden under their jackets.

 

    The ending is both exciting and twisty.  All the plot threads get tied up, the good guys prevail, and the bad guys are foiled.  There are some sequels, but they appear to be limited to six short stories and a novella.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.2/5 based on 1,853 ratings and 328 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.09/5 based on 16,761 ratings and 448 reviews

 

Things That Sound Dirty, But Aren’t…

    [The man], slightly wounded in the neck, desperately reached for the gun in his back pocket, but his pants were around his ankles.  (loc. 2714)

 

Excerpts...

    That morning at 3:15 Heidegger unlocked his door to the knock of police officers.  When he opened the door he found two men in ordinary clothes smiling at him.  One was very tall and painfully thin.  The other was quite distinguished, but if you looked in his eyes you could tell he wasn’t a banker.

    The two men shut the door behind them.  (loc. 688)

 

    The terminal was beginning to fill with the bustling people who would pass through it during the day.  A wheezing janitor swept cigarette butts off the red rug.  A mother tried to coax a bored infant into submission.  A nervous coed sat wondering if her roommate’s half-fare card would work.  Three young Marines headed home to Michigan wondered if she would work.  A retired wealthy executive and a penniless wino slept in adjoining chairs, both waiting for daughters to fly in from Detroit.  A Fuller Brush executive sat perfectly still, bracing himself for the effects of a jet flight on a gin hangover.  (loc. 2672)

 

Kindle Details…

    Six Days of the Condor sells for $8.99 at Amazon right now.  James Grady has seven other e-books available at Amazon, including two that have tie-ins to Six Days of the Condor.  They range in price from $1.99 to $11.99.

 

“I Imagine there are many who frown on the U.S. government pushing dope.”  (loc. 2560)

    The quibbles are minor.  The cussing, frankly, was a lot less than I expected, just 12 instances in the first 25%.  OTOH, there were also a half dozen rolls-in-the-hay.

 

    Each of the twelve chapters starts out with a quote.  Some are by US presidents about the CIA, and those were quite applicable.  Others were from Fred Reinfeld’s The Complete Chess Course and left me scratching my head, despite the fact that I’m an avid chessplayer.

 

    Last of all, it surprised me that in the one or two gunfights betwixt nerdy Malcolm and the ruthless killers, our hero fares rather well.  Of course, I admit it would’ve been a short, forgettable tale if the Malcolm had been blown away in the first hour of the chase.

 

    But I pick at nits.  For me, Six Days of the Condor was an intense, exciting, fingernails-biting story, and it’s easy to see why it was picked up and developed into a big-budget movie featuring big-budget stars like Faye Dunaway, Robert Redford, Cliff Robertson, and Max von Sydow.  Despite all the changes they made to James Grady’s original story, including renaming most of the characters (Ronald Malcolm becomes Joe Turner) and relocating the setting (Washington DC is replaced by New York City), I may have to see if Netflix carries this movie.

 

    8½ Stars.  At the beginning of the e-book is a “Confession” section wherein James Grady gives the background to his writing Six Days of the Condor, a short biography of his life pre- and post- the book being published, and his experience as a technical adviser on the movie.  This takes up 15% of the e-book.  I suggest reading it after you’ve read the story, not before.

The Voynich Cypher - Russell Blake

   2012; 268 pages.  Book 2 (out of 2) in the Dr. Steven Archer Cross series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Action-Thriller ; Suspense; Conspiracies; Puzzle-Solving.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    They had one job.

    To guard an insignificant canister (about the size of a thermos) that’s in a secret room inside a sleepy, nondescript abbey in Italy.  It should've been an easy task for three heavily-armed commandos – one inside the room, one outside its door, and one on the grounds of the abbey.  It doesn't matter that they’ve never been told what the canister holds.

    The job's not new; it's been going on for four centuries now, and no one's ever tried to steal the object.  After a while, even the best-equipped protectors can let down their guard just a tad.  Take a short nap.  Listen to music on an iPod.  There's never any excitement.

    Until tonight, when someone somehow has stolen the canister.  And now the Order of the Holy Relic, who own and occupy the abbey, who hired these guards, and who have been entrusted by the Pope himself to safeguard the canister’s mysterious contents, are in a high dudgeon over the theft.

    And when you steal from the Church, there’s going to be hell to pay.

What’s To Like...

    The storyline of The Voynich Cypher is built around a real document called the Voynich Manuscript, and which can be justifiably called the "Holy Grail of Cryptography".   You can read the Wikipedia article about it here.  The story's structure is very similar to that of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code: the Roman Catholic is guarding a centuries-old secret, somehow it gets compromised, our heroes unwittingly fins themselves in possession of the secret, and they spend the rest of the book going from place to place, solving riddle after riddle, getting ever closer to uncovering the cosmos-changing secret, while also trying to stay one step ahead of bad guys and other rivals.

    For the most part, The Voynich Cypher takes place in various cities in Italy, and I was particularly impressed with the vividness with which Russell Blake portrayed that country.  Maybe he’s lived there; in any event, it certainly didn’t feel like a Wikipedia cut-&-paste job. Our two protagonists, Dr. Steven Cross and Natalie Twain, are fun to tag along with, and there are enough thrills, spills, chases, and puzzles to keep the reader turning the pages.

    The author lists  the place and time settings for the first couple chapters at their start, which was quite helpful.  I enjoyed the (obligatory) Knights Templar tie-in, and was pleasantly surprised by the brief nod to Mithraism, a long-forgotten religion.  Russell Blake blends the historical background of the Voynich Manuscript into the story in bits and pieces.  To a certain extent, this felt like an info dump, but I suppose it was necessary, since most readers will be unacquainted with it.  The author apparently doesn’t think much of tattooed Goth girls, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg, and I got a chuckle out of that.

    I’m a big fan of situational ethics, so I was intrigued by the stealing of the “secret”.  Despite the excitement which ensues, I couldn’t help thinking that ultimately the Church had every right to try to recover the property that was stolen from it.  Curiously, the storyline sides with the thieves (the secret is said to be “liberated”, not “stolen”), and at times I found myself rooting for the agents of the Church to foil our heroes.

    The ending is adequately exciting, though not overly spectacular.  It had one interesting plot twist, but I was expecting it, since the reader knows all of the bad guys have to eventually be accounted for.  Some of the baddies are dispatched with a bit too providentially.  Ultimately, nothing in the world changes, but that sort of letdown is inherent with any book in this genre, including The Da Vinci Code.

    There are 42 chapters covering the 268 pages, which works out to roughly 6 pages per chapter.  The R-rated stuff is mostly cusswords, plus a couple of adult situations.   The number of secondary characters felt “just right” to me; not too many, not too few.  The Voynich Cypher is a standalone story, as well as the second book in a series.  It was published in 2012, and Russell Blake has never since added another installment to the series.  Inquiring minds would like to know why.

Kewlest New Word ...

Dispositive (adj.) : relating to or bringing about the settlement of an issue (such as the disposition of property).  (Heh.  I thought it was a goofy way of saying “negative”.)

Others : Dongle (n.).

Excerpts...                                

    “I think it’s him.  I trailed him from the flat.  I wish we had some photos so we could be sure,” the man muttered into the mouthpiece between puffs.

    “We’re trying to get access to the motor vehicle database for a license photo, but there’s nothing else I’ve been able to find.  The man obviously isn’t much for social media.  Pity.  Facebook’s made everything easier…”  (loc. 1618)

    “Where have you been?  It’s like you’re miles away.  Hello…”

    “I’m sorry.  I’m probably still tired, as well as a little surprised by …well… by this.”

    “Are you complaining?”

    “No.  Quite the opposite.  I mean it’s-“

    “If you find my company too distracting, we can always go back to being platonic colleagues,” she offered.

    “I’m not sure that would work,” Steven countered.

    “It had better not.”  (loc. 3424)

 “That’s the price of a soul these days?  I would have sold mine a long time ago if I’d had any idea you could get that kind of money for one.”  (loc. 4533)

    There are some quibbles.  All the characters are predominantly black or white; I like gray characters.  I felt there were a couple of missed opportunities for thrills and spills, most notably the demises of a pair of the “white-hat” secondary characters.

    There were one or two showing/telling issues, although not to where it got annoying.  And the author and his editors never could decide whether it’s a “duffel bag” or a “duffle bag”.  (Hint: it’s “duffel”.)

    But I pick at nits.  Overall, The Voynich Cypher kept my interest from start to finish, and didn’t strain the limits of believability, like some Action-Thriller do.  If you're looking for something to satisfy your "Dan Brown" itch, this book will do the trick nicely.

    8 Stars.  Subtract 2 stars if you don’t like books that are knockoffs of bestsellers like, say, Jurassic Park, Sherlock Holmes, Fifty Shades of Grey, or The Da Vinci Code.  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and I personally like such derivative efforts, provided they are well-done.