SOURCE: "His Years of Self-Imposed Exile Over, Richard Condon Is Back in America, Sitting Prizzi," in People Weekly, Vol. 26, No. 23, December 8, 1986, pp. 129, 131, 133.

In the essay below, Neill reviews Condon's life and literary accomplishments.

Like Don Corrado Prizzi, Richard Condon believes in family. For the Don—venomous and ancient, the spider at the center of Condon's Prizzi novels—family has to be protected; family is reason to kill. For Condon, affable but getting on in years himself, family is a reason finally to settle down in America after 19 years living in various spots around the world. And family is the reason he keeps writing at 71, despite the estimated $2 million he has made from his books and despite the two recent abdominal operations.

"A friend asked, 'Why does one still do it?'" Condon says with a laugh in the art-filled living room of the Dallas home he has lived...