Let me make something clear. I’m prejudiced: I don’t like people who don’t like America, and I especially don’t like Americans who don’t like America. I’ve never met David Ignatius, but I don’t believe I’d like him, though I hope I’m wrong because he sure can write. I just find it impossible to separate the political tone (it’s all our fault) from the novel, just as I can no longer be enchanted by Barbra Streisand’s voice or Sean Penn’s thespian skills.

Now, if you’re more open-minded than I am (I won’t say liberal, because no one is more closedminded than liberals, thereby ruining a wonderful word and an outstanding concept), just skip this column and go out and get a copy of “Body of Lies” (Norton, 349 pages, $24.95) because it is an exceptionally exciting thriller.

It is evident that Mr. Ignatius intimately knows the CIA and its operations in the Middle East; they are among his specialties for the Washington Post, for which he has worked for more than 20 years as a foreign correspondent, editor, and columnist. It is further clear that he understands how complex and dangerous the life of an agency field operative can be in that volatile region.

The hero of this adventure is Roger Ferris, an idealistic young CIA agent whose first career choice was as a Time magazine reporter. When he did a short piece on the radical Muslims who set off a bomb at the World Trade Center in 1993, he knew that he was onto something important.

“The more he talked to the sheiks, the more obvious it became: These people hate us. They don’t want to negotiate anything. They want to kill us.” When he couldn’t find a publisher for his book on Islamic extremism, he returned to college, further studying the history of the region — even learning to speak Arabic. ” His Arabic professors at Columbia were happy to have him back, although they disapproved of his studying Islamic extremism as opposed to writing love letters to the downtrodden Palestinians.”

Soon recruited by the CIA, he is assigned to Jordan, “the land of lies and secrets, where survival was the only true aim of politics,” catching the eye of Hani Salaam, the head of Jordanian security.

Car bombings throughout Europe are traced to a terrorist known as Suleiman, and the CIA joins forces with the Jordanian secret service to catch the mastermind. In a plot more complicated than the directions for assembling a gas grill, Ferris, sometimes directed by his hard-as-hooves boss in Washington, Ed Hoffman, and Hani concoct the notion of convincing Al Qaeda that Suleiman has been turned, thereby eliminating him and much of its vast network in a single stroke.

It is in the abundant action scenes of battles, torture, skillful maneuvering of players, and the creation of suspense that Mr. Ignatius finds his strike zone in this never-a-dull-moment novel.

So far so good, but things become dicey when Ferris meets a beautiful blonde (has there ever been an espionage novel in which a key female character is not beautiful?) and falls in love with her, thereby slaying his already wounded marriage to a beautiful brunette.

The blonde, Alice Melville, has a heart of gold, but then so does a hard-boiled egg. She apparently has dedicated her life to helping poor Arabs, never losing an opportunity to lecture Ferris on the arrogance and beastliness of Americans. She lives in a slum, but speaks of what “really good guys” the local Al Qaeda sympathizers are.

Then, with enough hot air to float all the balloons in the Macy’s parade, she delivers another lecture: “Do you listen to them, Roger? Does the American government listen to them? Or do we just want to shoot them?”

Meanwhile Hani spends a great deal of time lecturing Ferris, too, mainly about how “you Americans” are arrogant, impatient, and — clearly understood if not articulated — stupid.

Can you imagine the indignation if any American character in contemporary fiction ranted in these terms about another country? Why Mr. Ignatius feels comfortable writing this way about his countrymen is something only he can answer.

It would be unfair to give away the ending, which has more twists than a Chubby Checker marathon, but you know it’s all gone awry when Ferris looks at the blond ponytail on his new girlfriend and is overcome with love. “He didn’t care if the new barbarians destroyed every skyscraper in America … so long as they spared Alice.”

Spare me.

Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual “Best American Mystery Stories.” He can be reached at ottopenzler@mysteriousbookshop.com.