Fred Burton talks with James Grady about Six Days of the Condor

One of the best parts of my job is I get to interview people who have influenced me. James Grady is one of them. His first novel, SIX DAYS OF THE CONDOR, influenced a generation of thriller and espionage writers. The book was turned into a classic movie starring the legendary Robert Redford. I was fascinated to learn that the KGB read the book and saw the movie, then created a unit to do exactly what James had depicted in his fiction thriller! Unbelievable. Enjoy the chat and let me know what you think?

When James Grady wrote, "Six Days of the Condor" in 1973, he had no idea his work of spy fiction would see repetition in the real world. But from an international assassination to a complete government-run espionage department, that's what happened. More than 40 years after the book was first published. with a TV series and several sequels to boot behind him, Grady says, his hero is still human. "One thing that has changed completely," he says," is that society is so much more complex and individuals are more...isolated than we were in the 1970's. The digital revolution has made it harder to separate fact from theory from propaganda from downright manipulation, which is the opposite of what people would have said at the dawn of the information age. But also, there are more and different kinds of ...bad actors now than there ever have been... in part due to fragmentation of society." And that makes today's world infinitely more vexing when it comes to security, geopolitics and diplomacy than the bad old days of the Cold War.