Will I love Six Days of the Condor?

This spot very nearly went to the great John le Carre, perhaps his brilliant The Little Drummer Girl.

Grady’s debut is not as complex or as dense as le Carre, but it holds a special place in my heart, partly because of its back story.

Grady was a young congressional staffer in my adopted hometown of Washington, DC when he dreamed up a covert CIA unit whose role is to monitor foreign intelligence operations by scouring books and magazines from around the world.

When the novel was adapted into the movie Three Days of the Condor, it was… show more.

For me, this story is a lively reminder of the necessity of adaptability. Our mastery of life is essentially on-the-job training, an education that never ends.

In this espionage thriller, a man comes back from lunch to find everyone in his office murdered. Realizing that he is also a target, he goes on the run. But it’s not enough to escape. If he wants to survive, he needs to understand what’s happening. He must pursue his pursuers.

But he is completely out of his element here. His job was to read books all day. He has no experience being an… show more.

James Grady was 23 years old when he wrote this cold war spy thriller masterpiece in his loft apartment in Helena, Montana, yet what he imagined came true. He created a secret CIA division so realistically that – The New York Times later found – the Soviet KGB, assuming the division existed, created one of their own. Grady also came up with a unique way to carry out an assassination....which unfortunately was copied by Iranian agents in Washington after the book came out. I love the real connection between the “what if” of thrillers and what is in the world.