Current Events Inspire Thrillers for the 21st Century

Your browser doesn’t support HTML5 audio

Where do the ideas for today's political thrillers come from? Gone are the cloak-and-dagger lives of agents fighting the Cold War: Two recent novels make suspenseful plots out of the people and places in contemporary headlines.

David Ignatius talks to Robert Siegel about his novel Body of Lies, which tells of a fictional CIA effort to infiltrate al-Qaida. And former spy James Church (a pseudonym) discusses his book A Corpse in Koryo, which follows North Korean Inspector O on the trail of international intrigue.

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email