I Am Pilgrim, Terry Hayes

I AM PILGRIM is screenwriter Terry Hayes' debut novel, which I would not have picked without knowing the background up front. Obviously written with a keen visual sense, the novel doesn't read like a screen treatment or a movie script. This is a good old fashioned, seat of the pants, keep you up way past your bedtime, spy thriller. 

A lengthy book, which when reading in ebook format, didn't even enter my mind. It was only when I noticed a paperback copy on the shelves of a bookshop that it suddenly dawned on me that this is a doorstopper of a thing. Which is even greater testament to just how good it is. At no stage did the length become noticeable. There wasn't even the suspicion of padding.

Reminiscent of the very best of the Cold War spy thrillers, this story moves through a vast and varied landscape from deep in the Hindu Kush, through Turkey, New York and Saudi Arabia, whilst taking the reader on a journey mostly via the narrator's viewpoint. Man of action, retired spy specialist, ghost author of a book on his own exploits and expertise, cleverly he is both hero and questionable. Perhaps an unreliable narrator. Whilst guessing about Pilgrim's motivations there is no doubting the threat that he is attempting to stop - genocide on a massive basis, aimed directly at the United States. And so very cleverly executed that when the methodology is finally revealed, well it was breathtakingly believable.

Along the way there are alternative viewpoints explored. This gives the author a chance to expand on events, exploiting the possibility of questionable motives in the main character, pulling the all action hero back into a more human, flawed man who may not prevail. Giving the action, the possible outcomes an edge which was beautifully done. 

There have been rather a lot of fundamentalist religious storylines explored in thrillers that I've been asked to look at recently. In a lot of cases the black and whiteness of the villains and the heroes is too emphatic, way too simplistic. There have also been a number of examples that have tried, overly hard perhaps, to be fair to all sides of the argument. I AM PILGRIM is the first book in a long time that I've read that actually spells out a realistic scenario that this reader, probably naively, could accept. Even with the magnitude of the threat, there's the facility for some understanding of the motivation - if you're of a mind. If not, the inevitability of the toll for stopping the threat is equally open for exploration. It's up to the reader to decide, and that was such a refreshing experience when reading a thriller it stood out. It was also not afraid to do that with a dash of James Bond and George Smiley woven together to make the whole thing a fabulous yarn into the bargain.