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.

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