Spy fiction about games and trickery between US, Jordanian, and al-Qaida intelligence. Entertaining, but not my favorite genre. ( )

Another excellent novel from Ignatius. A complex and engaging plot kept my attention, but what really puts Ignatius in another league are the passing observations he makes that really sets his work apart.

Regarding the atmosphere at CIA headquarters:
"...the civil-service culture... permeated the corridors like dry rot. Ferris had heard the elite, band-of-brothers rhetoric when he joined. The agency had to be less smugly bureaucratic than Time, Inc., he reckoned, but he had been wrong. It was worse. It was a culture that had been lying to itself for so long that people had lost the ability to differentiate between what was real and what wasn't. Failure wasn't acceptable - so, as far as the agency was concerned, the CIA never made mistakes. These were people who believed their own PowerPoint presentations."

Regarding the role of the US in the world:
"You are a superpower, and you create so much turbulence when you move, even when you think you are being quiet and clever, that sometimes if we are lucky we can slip in behind you and catch a ride." ( )

Good story line. Just a personal quirk of not liking that some innocent characters were expendable -- the justifiable means towards an greater end, but that is just the nature of espionage and black ops. I didn't know that it had been made into a movie (and have clearly not seen it), but having read the book, I can probably correctly surmise that much of the subtler aspects were traded for the action. ( )

“Body of Lies” is the second book by David Ignatius that I’ve read (last month I read “Agents of Innocence”). Ignatius is an American journalist/novelist whom I never heard of until the infamous 2009 “Davos Incident”. Ignatius discovered – I’m sure to his amazement – how mad you can make a Turkish politician when you dare interrupt his ranting by putting a hand on his shoulder. No doubt Ignatius has been keeping his hands to himself since.

Anyway, some time ago The Economist recommended the new Ignatius novel “Bloodmoney”, and since I have this medical condition which impels me to make an effort to read books by the same author more or less in the chronological order they were published, I started with “Agents” and only then moved on to “Body of Lies”.

I didn’t like “Agents of Innocence” even though it was set in Lebanon and dealt with events surrounding the Palestinian encroaching takeover of that country in the 1970s, a topic I once used to be very interested in. I found the book to be lacking in depth and the characters to be too underdeveloped to be meaningful. I also found a factual mistake, which is always a real put off in books (Ignatius refers to the Israel currency, the Shekel, at a time when the currency was still the Lira). I had greater hopes for “Body of Lies” especially as I was vaguely aware there was a Leonardo DiCaprio character somewhere in there…

And I was not too disappointed. “Body of Lies” is a much more mature book than “Agents” and, if anything, moves at a much faster pace. Roger Ferris, a CIA agent stationed in Amman, Jordan, devises a scheme to set a trap for Al-Saleem, a terrorist responsible for multiple car bombings in Europe. He creates a fictional terrorist to “compete” with Al-Saleem (by setting off his own bomb), thus hoping to lure the terrorist out of hiding. His fatal mistake is not involving Hani Salaam, the elegantly dressed head of Jordanian Intelligence, in all the details. The two weave a “body of lies” around each other which eventually ends up in a shootout in Syria where Ferris almost dies but is saved at the last minute by Salaam. As is almost obligatory in these novels, Ferris is unhappily married and meets a beautiful woman, a nurse by the name of Aisha, with whom he falls hopelessly in love with, etc.

Right after finishing the book I watched the movie. That’s when I understood why I thought of DiCaprio; he plays the Ferris character. I liked the movie and thought it was perhaps even more enjoyable than the book, which I’m afraid doesn’t say much for David Ignatius’ writing. After all, a movie starring DiCaprio being better than something surely isn’t a good sign for that something… ( )

Body of Lies is a great modern day spy thriller. I finished the book in just a few days and thoroughly enjoyed it. Ignatius isn't as good as Le Carre, but he's a very competent story teller and someone whom I would read more from. The twist at the end of the book was a good one, and even though it took a smidge of suspension of disbelief to get there (some of the details seeming just a tiny bit implausible), it in no way detracted from my enjoyment of the tale.

The characters in this book, I felt, were deeper than some reviewers have given them credit for. To be sure there were some stock characters used, but character motivation and personality were always well defined. And besides, there isn't a thriller out there that doesn't make use of stock characters in some respect. If you're a fan of the genre, I don't see how Body of Lies would disappoint you.

Now, it's possible that some of the politics supposedly espoused in this book might turn a reader off; however, I actually thought Ignatius did a pretty good job of sticking to the middle road. The main character's girlfriend was a bleeding heart liberal, so she said bleeding heart liberal things. When I read the book, I was unsure if Ignatius espoused the same beliefs as Alice, since there are differing viewpoints expressed by various characters. But given his track record as a journalist, I'm disinclined to think so. And at any rate, you don't have to agree with or like every character in order to enjoy the story. ( )