Condor: The Short Takes - Softcover

London’s DAILY TELEGRAPH named James Grady as one of “50 crime writers to read before you die.”  Grady’s received Italy’s Raymond Chandler Medal, France’s Grand Prix Du Roman Noir, Japan’s Baku-Misu award for fiction, and an Edgar nomination from the Mystery Writers of America.  Beyond his Condor novels, he's published more than a dozen books and three times as many short stories. He’s been a cultural columnist for AOL’s PolticsDaily.com, an investigative reporter for muckraker Jack Anderson, freelanced for Slate and The New Republic.  His film credits include script work for HBO, CBS and Paramount.  A Montana native, Grady lives in Washington, D.C., is married to writer Bonnie Goldstein, has two children, Academy Award nominated documentary maker Rachel Grady and author Nathan Grady.
 

James Grady (b. 1949) is the author of screenplays, articles, and over a dozen critically acclaimed thrillers. Born in Shelby, Montana, Grady worked a variety of odd jobs, from hay bucker to gravedigger, before graduating from the University of Montana with a degree in journalism. In 1973, after years of acquiring rejection slips for short stories and poems, Grady sold his first novel: Six Days of the Condor, a sensational bestseller that was eventually adapted into a film starring Robert Redford.
 
After moving to Washington, DC, Grady worked for a syndicated columnist, investigating everything from espionage to drug trafficking. He quit after four years to focus on his own writing, and has spent the last three decades composing thrillers and screenplays. His body of work has won him France’s Grand Prix du Roman Noir, Italy’s Raymond Chandler Award, and Japan’s Baka-Misu literary prize. Grady’s most recent novel is Mad Dogs (2006). He and his wife live in a suburb of Washington, DC

“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.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review