David Ignatius' gripping novels are quickly emerging as the spy industry's narcotic for smart, complex intelligence yarns to read on long flights. His made-for-movies stories seem to be a hybridized LeCarre with a twist of Michael Crichton as he reveals tectonic fault lines between an overly self-confident, reckless America and a fragmented, in spots radicalized, almost always misunderstood Islamic world.

Bloodmoney, is a breathtaking, heady roller-coaster ride up and down the corridors of power from Washington to London to Pakistan, the novel’s main focus.

A piece of fiction you very much hope isn’t true, this spy novel centers on a Pakistani terrorist seeking revenge against the United States. A terrorist, mind you, who has a point.

David Ignatius of 'The Washington Post' on his book “Blood Money: A Novel of Espionage"

BLOODMONEY: A gripping, ripped-from-the-headlines CIA thriller set in Pakistan that will have you wondering just how much is actually fiction.

In “Bloodmoney,” a central character is a case officer named Sophie Marx, who seems modeled loosely on the real-life Dayna Baer, who wrote about her CIA career in the recent book “The Company We Keep.” Marx works in a Los Angeles CIA office disguised as “Hit Parade LLP,” which, according to Dun & Bradstreet, sells international music and television rights. In truth, the office runs covert officers around the world.

His engrossing novel ranges widely, from London to Karachi to Studio City, Calif. Along the way, it chronicles in patchwork form the innovative exploits and unintended consequences of a "secret and deniable" CIA-offshoot group assembled "to allow deep-cover officers to go where they couldn't go, and do what they couldn't do" under public scrutiny.

The pacing is brisk, the writing is clean and efficient, and the plot is blessedly free of that fate-of-the-world melodrama that destroys far too many so-called thrillers. We come away convinced that this is what it’s really like out there for those silent soldiers of the secret world, working in the world’s bleakest corners.

Ordinarily, American operatives in Pakistan would collaborate with the local intelligence agency, because in theory, Pakistan is an ally. But in the novel — and in real life — if it appears that the local intelligence agency won't cooperate, American operatives will simply fly under the radar.

“Bloodmoney” is, among other stories, a study of Pakistan and its secret service, the ISI. The service is built on a mountain of lies. (“His lies could be tucked into the bags under his eyes, or hidden in the fold of flesh below his chin,” he writes of its boss.) But it is also the backbone of Pakistan—one of the few things, along with the army and hatred of America, that keeps the fractious country together. This book has such a contemporary ring that you expect to come upon a description of Osama bin Laden living in a safe-house in Abbottabad.

I found that I couldn't capture ISI's nuances in newspaper columns. So my eighth novel, Bloodmoney, is set largely in Pakistan; it centers on a fictional ISI and a CIA whose operations inside Pakistan have spun out of control. I describe the director general of my imaginary ISI this way: "To say that the Pakistani was playing a double game did not do him justice; his strategy was far more complicated than that."

I began writing fiction because it was the only way to tell all the intricacies of a real-life spy story. I had written a front-page piece for the Wall Street Journal in 1983 about how the CIA had recruited Yasser Arafat's intelligence chief during the '70s. After the story was published, I learned through a strange chain of events the inner details of the operation—including the names of people who were still at risk. I decided that the best way to narrate what I knew was in a novel. It was published in 1987 by W.W. Norton as Agents of Innocence and is still in print.

Yes, yes, you should read all the first-rate newspaper and journal and online entries you can find about the tangled relationships among the United States, Pakistan, the CIA, Pakistan's ISI, the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Tehrik-i Taliban in Pakistan, et cetera.

But if you would like to see those same themes explored in a very accomplished spy thriller, look for Bloodmoney, by David Ignatius, whose official publication date is a few weeks away but which, if the publisher has its wits about it, should be hustling toward the bookstores at this instant.

Frederick Hitz, the CIA’s former inspector general and an admirer of Ignatius’s work, cautions what while fiction can illustrate the basic human stresses of espionage as ably as nonfiction can, it nevertheless fails to capture “all the ways in which a human spy can scheme, rationalize, justify and alter his behavior to perform his espionage mission.”

The Washington Post's David Ignatius, who knows more about the CIA than any other columnist does, writes terrific spy novels, usually set in the Middle East and filled with intricate and plausible tradecraft. This time he's right on top of the news: an Iranian nuclear scientist wants to switch sides. Much of the action takes place in Tehran, which Ignatius knows well, and the pages fly.

Alan Cheuse's review of The Increment, 'the best spy thriller Ignatius has ever written'

John Weisman's June 7 review of The Increment for the Washington Times

Bob Kemper's Q&A with David Ignatius discusses the CIA, spy novels, and Leonardo DiCaprio's role in Body of Lies

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reveals how he transformed his regrets about the Iraq war into a timely new spy novel about Iran’s nuclear program.

Another virtuoso book I want to recommend is Other Rooms, Other Wonders, a collection of stories by the Pakistani-American writer Daniyal Mueenuddin. I can't praise Mueenuddin's work too much: He has the gifts of insight into human behavior of Alice Munro, the gift for detail we find in Updike and William Trevor, and the ability to make sentences and paragraphs that pack the punch of something out of James Salter and Richard Ford.

Like undercover agents suddenly discovering rival operatives on the same mission, two new spy thrillers seem to have stumbled into each other's path in recent weeks. Both "Banquo's Ghosts" and "The Increment" propose that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program and focus attention on a scientist at the heart of the research. Both novels involve a rogue CIA operation that departs from agency protocol. And both books boast a noted journalist at the helm: Rich Lowry is editor of the National Review (his co-author here is a literary agent), and David Ignatius is a columnist for The Washington Post. Yet despite all these similarities, the two novels couldn't be more different in their attitudes and approaches.

May 10 edition of the Denver Post makes The Increment the 'Editor's Choice'

John Miller's podcast with David Ignatius in which the Increment is discussed

Bob Minzesheimer interviews David Ignatius about The Increment in the May 19 edition of USA Today.

In his latest, Ignatius imagines a full-lather American plunge toward war with Iran as intelligence operatives battle over whether Tehran is really on the brink of going nuclear, as in nuclear arms.

This hour, On Point: David Ignatius goes close to life in “The Increment.”

Article in May-June 2009 issue of Foreign Policy by David Ignatius

Brief write-up of The Increment

Review of The Increment by Jennifer Reese. Graded B.

Article by David Ignatius in the May 2009 issue of Foreign Policy

Short excerpt of The Increment in RD May 2009 issue

Online chat with David Ignatius, Oct. 13

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