Foreign intrigue specialist Ignatius (The Increment) continues his fictional trek through terrorist hot spots with this timely thriller about the CIA's bungling attempts to influence Pakistan's shaky, insecure leadership. Sophie Marx, an agent hungry to return to the field after a high-level but boring desk job, works for a new intelligence unit disguised as a Los Angeles record company, Hit Parade, whose undercover focus is to control Pakistani organized terrorist cells through bribery. It's not working. Not only are the terrorist attacks continuing but CIA agents delivering the bribes are being murdered. To make matters worse, Hit Parade's secret funding source—a highly illegal strategy to skim money from the world's financial markets—is rapidly becoming public knowledge. Ignatius, a Washington Post columnist, is especially good at capturing the work environment at the CIA, where petty bickering, one-upmanship, and moral lapses often get in the way of sound policy. (June)
"In addition to being a solid page-turner, [Bloodmoney] offers intriguing characters, a complicated but skillfully explicated plot and a nuanced view of Pashtun tribal culture often at odds with the larger Punjabi population. And as with all of Ignatius’ fiction, readers attuned to current events may wonder if he knows things most Americans don’t."
Action junkie Sophie Marx works for a secret CIA unit formed after 9/11 to avoid the sclerotic Langley headquarters. Suddenly, four agents are assassinated, and her job is to find and plug the leaks. She goes deep into suspicious territory to discern the facts from the careful camouflage. To her horror, she learns that her own side is rotten with deceit as her boss is using the powerful instruments of modern finance in London to fund the alternative unit. Unbeknownst to anyone, a Pakistani professor bent on revenge for the drone-caused deaths of his family had penetrated the electronic defenses and killed the vulnerable agents. VERDICT Ignatius leverages a colorful cast of fresh characters and the mystique of the Internet to weave a compulsively readable story about the profound hostilities in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The author's eighth novel (The Increment; Body of Lies) is essential for all active readers of spy thrillers and suspense and will leave them happily hungry for the ninth one. [See Prepub Alert, 12/6/10.]—Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA
Revenge is a jagged-edged puzzle, and within the espionage community it can be even more lethal. Firdous Bamji grounds us firmly in the unfamiliar settings of Pakistan and the Middle East with clear, fluid name and place pronunciations. They’re never stumbling blocks though the intricate mesh of relationships, clans, and shifting loyalties are all part of the deadly game played by the CIA, ISI, and now a new off-the-books, super-clandestine American outfit. Informed details and cultural anthropology are hallmarks of David Ignatius's intelligent thrillers, and that richness carries well into the audio format. Narrator Bamji hides in plain sight, a spy's trick. For listeners this means no overly strong presence—but instead the recessive storyteller making sure all goes according to plan. If you liked BODY OF LIES, find more engaging listening here. R.F.W. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine
Ignatius (The Increment, 2009, etc.) continues his series of top-notch CIA thrillers with this fast-paced new entry.
CIA field agent Sophie Marx recently returned from an overseas assignment where she narrowly escaped being killed. Now Sophie's working in a special off-the-books project run by the dangerous but capable Jeff Gertz. Gertz alone knows the full story behind the Hit Parade, a separate, untraceable operation of the CIA that is hidden in Los Angeles behind the façade of an entertainment company. From this seemingly innocuous office, Gertz runs operatives all over the world whose jobs, it appears, are to bring assets into the fold. But then something goes wrong, and those operatives start dying. One by one, the Hit Parade is losing some of its best agents to an unknown threat and Gertz, who never lets anyone see him sweat, decides that Sophie, his newly named chief of counterintelligence, is exactly the right person to keep his boss at the CIA and the White House off his back. When Sophie heads out to investigate, she finds much more than she anticipated. A longtime contributor to theWashington Post, where he has covered both the CIA and the Middle East, Ignatius writes with authority and skill about a shadow world in which nothing is as it seems and money is power.This may be fiction, but in the end the reader will be struck by how feasible the story really is.
A terrific, believable novel about the intersection of politics, ethics and finance.
