Body of Lies [ペーパーバック]

Body of Lies is surely an apt title for this taut thriller from Washington Post columnist David Ignatius because for starters - a body is needed, a dead body. Not just any corpse, mind you: "It took nearly a month to find the right body. Roger Ferris had very particular requirements: He wanted a man in his thirties, physically fit, preferably blond but certainly and recognizably Caucasian. He should have no obvious signs of disease or physical trauma. And no bullet wounds, either. That would make it too complicated later."

Complicated is a mild description of what is to come later as Roger Ferris, one of the CIA's top operatives in today's war on terrorism, is assigned to Jordan following wounds he received in Iraq. To date no one has been able to net Suleiman, the Muslim terrorist behind car bombings throughout the world. He's hidden deep in the desert, unapproachable, invisible.

Ferris is an idealist, determined that 9/11 won't happen again and to this end he initiates a complex scheme used by the British in their war against the Nazis. The British World War II plot was called Operation `Mincemeat," a clever stratagem that allowed the British to feed false information to the Nazis through the dead body of a decoy British agent. Ferris's ploy, dubbed "taqiyya" (ancient Arabic for a necessary lie) is intended to convince Suleiman that American agents have already worked their way in to Al-Qaeda, and he is in danger.

Risky? Undoubtedly, but Suleiman must be stopped and so far American efforts have been slow, ineffective, and riddled with errors.

Film rights for this powerful novel have already been acquired by Warner Bros. Rightly so, as David Ignatius can write with a keen understanding of CIA operations and international terrorism. He has studied and covered both in his 25 years as reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor. He's a strong writer, and his story is a gripping one made even more compelling by its probability.

Highly recommended.

- Gail Cooke

This is a very bad book, for reasons covered by many of the other negative reviews. However, it was about Chapter 10 that the underlying reason struck me. This wasn't written to be a book, but rather is a precursor to a screenplay for a big budget Hollywood action movie [...] Things that make no sense for a book make perfect sense when viewed as part of a screenplay.

The author is horrible on the "love story" components - it ranges from plodding to painful. Yet the love story is such a large portion of the book that it squeezes out the spy story.

And the spy story seems to be warped to favor visuals and dialog over thinking.

The author does not live up to his reputation as a writer of spy stories (from recommendations - this is the first of his books I read). The implausibilities and nonsense are glaring and far too numerous. The love story destroys the pacing of the spy story. The ending is badly forced (both in pacing and content) - it feels like the author was approaching a deadline and decided he had to wrap it up very quickly.

And especially annoying, the author cheats. When you tell a story from the perspective of one of the characters, you can't suddenly start excluding the reader from that character's conversations as a (lazy) way to create suspense. You can't have characters who are experts at keeping secrets (1) randomly reveal that they have a secret and then (2) reveal it to the main character just because he essentially pleads "Aw come on, tell me" a couple of times. This is a lazy - if not contemptuous (of the reader) - way to reveal information, although the demands of a screenplay may dictate such shortcuts. And you can't have a CIA case officer who is repeatedly incurious about significant events.

Because of the author's reputation, the promise of the opening chapters and the intriguing idea (hence two stars rather than one), I got sucked into reading to the end. But I came away feeling not just let down, but cheated and abused by the author.

The book dishonors its two main inspirations (cited by the author in an interview): the WW2 British operation described in the book "The Man Who Never Was: ..." and the Jordanian intelligence operation that caused the Abu Nidal terrorist organization to self-destruct.

Examples that avoid spoilers:
1. The body is presented to the terrorists in a shoot-out in hostile territory in which he - the most important person present - is riding in the only unarmored car in the convoy. Plausible?
2. The "pocket litter" (inherited from "The Man Who Never Was") is poorly thought out. First, many espionage books (fiction and non-fiction) talk about case officers emptying their pockets and doing a complete document shift (Aside: pocket litter was already a known problem in WW2 - movies show aircraft crews were reminded of this). Second: One of the items included on the body was a receipt for a gas purchase. Think: You are a CIA case officer buying gas on the way to the airport to fly to Pakistan. Supposing you even bother to ask the gas pump for a receipt, do you put the receipt in your pocket or in the car's glove box (to deal with when you return)? Everyone I asked picked the later. Or how about leaving it in your hotel room in Pakistan? (Note: pocket litter was important in TMWNW because he was traveling between rear areas and wouldn't have taken the precautions of someone going into combat.)
3. The case officer visits the site of a staged car bombing during preparations. Why? It unnecessarily simplifies making the connection by anyone doing surveillance of him. Furthermore, they evacuate people from the target several _days_ before the attack, greatly increasing the chance of the operation being "blown." Why? The only reason I could figure that that it greatly simplified exposition in the planned movie.
4. The problems with the condition of the body are acknowledged and then ignored. In "The Man Who Never Was", they plan for him to be exposed to the (harsh) elements (both actual and assumed by the discoverers) to obscure evidence it has been in storage. In this book, the body will be seen by the enemy within minutes of his supposed death. It is not credible that they would not notice the difference (blood oozing instead of spurting).
5. The "poison" that the CIA plans to inject into the terrorist organization doesn't seem to fit the bill - it seems to be more of a mild diuretic.

Unfortunately I did not find this novel as compelling as my fellow reviewers. The prose was mechanical and the plot formulaic. Worst of all were the cardboard characters that Mr. Ignatius moved around the cut-out diorama of his book. Quickly I lost interest and ultimately I had to put it down. I found Robert Baer's "See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism" much better written and much more compelling.