The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon

They are taken to Manchuria, and brainwashed into believing Shaw saved their lives in combat – for which Shaw is subsequently awarded the Medal of Honor. Major Bennett Marco, Sergeant Raymond Shaw, and the rest of their infantry platoon are captured by an elite Soviet commando unit during the Korean War in 1952. Marco reprograms Shaw, although the reader is unsure until the final pages if it worked. He uses the card to interrogate Shaw as to his final plan Shaw is to shoot the presidential candidate during the convention in order to win overwhelming support for Senator Iselin, the vice-presidential candidate, and the dictatorial powers he’ll request following the assassination. Marco discovers the trigger of the “Queen of Diamonds” and meets with Shaw at the Central Park Zoo shortly before the party’s national convention. government, with her husband, McCarthy-esque Senator Johnny Iselin, as a puppet dictator.

Shaw’s KGB handler is his domineering mother Eleanor, a ruthless power broker working with the Communists to execute a “palace coup d’état” to quietly overthrow the U.S. Provoked by the appearance of the card, he obeys orders which he then forgets. It is revealed that the Communists have been using Shaw as a sleeper agent, a guiltless assassin subconsciously activated by seeing the “Queen of Diamonds” playing card while playing solitaire.

When Marco learns that another soldier from the platoon also has been suffering the same nightmare, he sets to uncovering the mystery and its meaning. Years after the war, Marco, now back in the United States working as an intelligence officer, begins suffering the recurring nightmare of Shaw murdering two of his comrades, all while clinically observed by Chinese and Soviet intelligence officials. They are taken to Manchuria, and are brainwashed to believe that Shaw saved their lives in combat – for which Congress awards him the Medal of Honor. Major Bennett Marco, Sergeant Raymond Shaw, and the rest of their infantry platoon are kidnapped during the Korean War in 1952. Now he’s been returned to the United States with a covert mission: to kill a candidate running for US president. During his time as a prisoner of war in North Korea, he was brainwashed by his Communist captors and transformed into a deadly weapon-a sleeper assassin, programmed to kill without question or mercy at his captors’ signal. Raymond Shaw is keeping a deadly secret-even from himself. The Manchurian Candidate (1959), by Richard Condon, is a political thriller novel about the son of a prominent US political family who is brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for a Communist conspiracy.Ī war hero and the recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, Sgt.

The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon