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In true old-timey fashion Condon spends much of the novel’s first third introducing us to Raymond, a good looking but troubled young man who proves an extremely receptive subject for the communist aggressors who capture Raymond and several of his fellow soldiers during the Korean War, and brainwash them in Manchuria. This is a novel in which characterization comes at the expense of narrative drive, especially in the early pages. The protagonist, a journalist-soldier named Raymond Shaw, is an extremely well rounded personage, although that’s part of the problem. Written in the “bestseller” style of the 1950s, it’s overdone and lugubrious, albeit not entirely without worth.
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It’s not bad, mind you, just several decades past its prime. That movie, directed by John Frankenheimer, is a justified classic, while the novel is what it is.
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE BY RICHARD CONDON MOVIE
You probably know THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, like many of the novels of its prolific author (who also provided the source material for WINTER KILLS and PRIZZI’S HONOR), for the famous 1962 movie adapted from it, and that’s as it should be. The word for this quasi-satirical brainwashing thriller is dated.