Body of Lies: A Novel (Movie Tie-In)

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Product Description
The novel made into the major motion picture released October 2008, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe: "Clever [and] well-paced, Body of Lies is hard to put down."—John Miller, Wall Street Journal

CIA soldier Roger Ferris has come out of Iraq with a shattered leg and an intense mission—to penetrate the network of a master terrorist known only as "Suleiman." Ferris's plan is inspired by a masterpiece of British intelligence during World War II: He prepares a body of lies, literally the corpse of an imaginary CIA officer who appears to have accomplished the impossible by recruiting an agent within the enemy's ranks.

This scheme binds friend and foe in a web of extraordinary subtlety and complexity. When it begins to unravel, Ferris finds himself flying blind into a hurricane. His only hope is the urbane head of Jordan's intelligence service. But can Ferris trust him?

Customer Reviews: Read 57 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

A GREAT READ - HAUNTING IN ITS VERY REAL POSSIBILITY April 10, 2007
63 out of 72 found this review helpful

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

5 out of 5 stars

A spy story from the front lines of the Long War April 2, 2007
43 out of 52 found this review helpful

BODY OF LIES is startlingly contemporary--a story of the front lines of the intelligence war against Al Qaeda by a journalist who has covered both the CIA and Iraq for a quarter of a century. It is at once sobering, touching and invigorating. Fans of Ignatius's earlier works should know that this book is his best; those who have not yet discovered this prolific spy novelist (whose day job is as columnist for THE WASHINGTON POST) should do so. Inside a detailed and authoritative story of how both Western and Arab secret services fight what has been called "the long war" against violent Islamic terror, Ignatius has created a story of identity in the hall of mirrors that is the contemporary Middle East, and a love story that is powerful in its evocation of the ways that love can make us treasure life, and at the same time lay it down for those we love. Cancel your weekend plans; you won't be able to put BODY OF LIES down.

2 out of 5 stars

Screenplay, not a novel. So wait for the movie July 22, 2007
13 out of 14 found this review helpful

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 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.
3. The case officer visits the site of a staged car bombing during preparations. Why? It unnecessarily simplifies any surveillance making the connection. 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 dismissed. In "The Man Who Never Was", they plan for him to be exposed to the (harsh) elements for days before being discovered, thereby concealing 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.
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.

5 out of 5 stars

Masters of the Game May 6, 2007
12 out of 17 found this review helpful

Not since the days before John LeCarre forgot which side of the Cold War he was on has spy fiction been written with such authenticity. For just as LeCarre's everyman George Smiley debunked images of swashbuckling secret agents swilling martinis in Monte Carlo casinos, David Ignatius' "Body of Lies" paints a realistic portrait of terror and espionage in today's war of survival between the West and radical Islam.

Roger Ferris is a CIA operative, returned to the Middle East after an Al Qaeda RPG nearly took his life, leaving him with a shattered leg and a permanent limp. In this fictional tale of today that could easily be the headlines of tomorrow, Al Qaeda his notched up the terror from Baghdad to the streets of Milan and Frankfort, begging the question of how long before car bombs ignite Chicago and Denver. Behind the escalated violence is a shadowy Al Qaeda operative known only as "Suleiman", an unusually evasive mastermind of terror who, despite patiently painstaking effort, the allied intelligence services have been unable to track. Loosely teamed and partnered with the urbane and deadly Hani Salaam, the formidable Jordanian spymaster, Ferris, inspired by British tactics in the face of superior WWII Nazi power, initiates a clever ruse in an attempt to trick Suleiman into showing his hand. With Britain's legacy of "The Man Who Never Was" and some help from Special Forces to procure a suitable corpse, Ferris and Company build the legacy of a fictitious special agent, fabricated to make it appear that he has infiltrated Suleiman's web of butchery. With this setup, twenty-five year veteran of the Middle East for the Washington Post-David Ignatius spins an insightful tale of spy craft and the delicate relationships between the US and our friends and foes in that powder keg of the eastern Mediterranean. Charged with CIA technology that would have 007 and gadget guy "Q" drooling, clandestine black operations, and a balanced treatment of Mid-eastern politics, Ignatius builds a powder keg page-turner of his own. And while told from a different vantage point, "Body of Lies" is definitely up to par with David Silva's gripping, authoritative, and brutal drama capturing the struggles of the troops in the trenches of the world war that we'd prefer not to acknowledge.

As relevant as the daily headlines and as suspenceful and entertaining as the best fiction on the market, Ignatius has hit a home run with this one. Don't wait - but the hard cover.

1 out of 5 stars

I Should Have Been Suspicious When 'Body Of Lies' Got A Rave from George Tenet July 1, 2007
11 out of 21 found this review helpful

Yeah, that should have been the tip-off. Add Chris Matthews and Bob Woodward to the chorus, and you have an Establishment endorsed spy novel. To compare a formulaic plot, stilted writing, (only adorned by Ignatius's reporter's knowledge of the region), to a real writer like Graham Greene is chutzpah of the first degree. Lastly, for the paperback addition, the editor might want to examine page 61 and make one slight change where the 'expert' Ignatius informs the reader that the first bombing of the World Trade Center occurred in 1991. Uh, actually, it was 1993. But as we know, 'facts' were never a problem for Tenet et al before. If spy fiction that is informed by the human heart (and not just tradecraft), is your thing, stick to real professionals. Graham Greene would be a good start.

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