James Grady
Description
Product Description
James Grady revolutionized the political thriller with his first novel,
Six Days of the Condor. Now Grady breaks fresh thriller t
...
erritory with
Mad Dogs, a brilliant novel launched from a totally original creation: the CIA’s secret insane asylum for “retired” agents.
Five deranged CIA killers, all of them dependent on their meds and deep in the woods of Maine, are forced to break out of the asylum when someone murders their psychiatrist ---and frames them for the deed.
Crazy and traumatized by their experiences in the CIA, they operate under somewhat skewed perceptions of the real world. Their training, however, has prepared them to survive in an unfriendly world---even if that world is the Boston-to-Washington corridor as they chase down the real killer.
Suspenseful, fast, and edgy, as well as funny and humane,
Mad Dogs is a stunning novel of political commentary and a tour-de-force of contemporary literary style, a look at twenty-first-century spy wars.
From Publishers Weekly
Grady's first thriller in a decade finds the author of Six Days of the Condor taking an altogether different look at the spook trade-the lives of CIA operatives who had to be institutionalized because they went crazy on the job. Five spies, all being held at an asylum in Maine, find themselves the likely victims of a frame-up when their psychiatrist is murdered in their therapy room. With remarkable ease, they escape their confines and embark on a week-long run for freedom and revenge that takes the so-called Mad Dogs-all off their meds-to the nation's capital to find out who killed their shrink and why. The adventure is narrated by Victor, the most intellectual of the bunch, who cracked up after a particularly harrowing experience on the job in Malaysia. Grady (White Flame) punctuates whipsaw bouts of action with dark humor and poignant glimpses into his characters' broken lives. Unfortunately, the Mad Dogs' search for the killer is interrupted all too often by zany, psycho-fueled episodes that sidetrack their mission and the reader's interest.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
His first novel (
Six Days of the Condor, 1974) may still be his best, but this one gets points for sheer weirdness. Five former CIA operatives, now living in a government-run, top-secret insane asylum in Maine, break out after their psychiatrist is murdered. Framed for murder and running for their lives, they make their way to Washington, D.C., and a man they hope holds the key to the mystery. But these are deeply unbalanced individuals, each of whom sees the world in his or her unique way. Can they--and, by extension, the reader--trust their perceptions? There are a couple of ways to read the novel: as a flat-out thriller or as an extended hallucination. Either reading works just fine. Grady does a remarkable job of crafting his characters and of creating their "mission," an infiltration of a strange and frightening world: the U.S. For these former heroes, passing as "normal" is their greatest challenge, and, ultimately, this is a story of emancipation, of breaking free from--or at least coming to terms with--their own troubled minds.
David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
“
Mad Dogs is the literary equivalent of a supercharged Hemi, a rock-and-roll road novel that roars out of the gate and never slows pace. James Grady, the king of the modern espionage thriller, is back with a vengeance.”--George Pelecanos, bestselling author of
Hell to Pay
“What a pleasure to be in the hands of a master storyteller. James Grady’s
Mad Dogs starts off with one of the best first sentences I’ve read in a long time and goes full-throttle, pedal-to-the-floor right up until the final page. A great, great read.”--Dennis Lehane,
New York Times bestselling author of
Mystic River
“A brilliantly conceived premise ripped from the secret
Read more