Thriller set in locations around the world (“..honest escapism..”)

17th January 2016

I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes, thriller set in locations around the world.

What are the ingredients of a good thriller? An attractive hero (usually flawed), dangerous enemies, a generous dollop of sex and/or violence and a narrative that moves fast enough to stop kill-joys identifying any holes in the plot – in all this I Am Pilgrim fulfills requirements. Another popular ingredient is exotic locations and here the book excels. Action rockets between New York, Moscow and London – and that’s only in the first few short chapters.

This is a book to be read quickly as the plot is so complicated you dare not stop for long in case you forget events so far – although perhaps that says more about the state of my memory than the book. Indeed I found myself wishing for a list of characters like the ones in some old detective novels stories, or at least for the chapters to be named after the locations in which they’re set: Saudi Arabia, (Jeddah), Syria (Damascus), Afghanistan, Turkey (Bodrum). They all fly past faster than a speeding bullet, which is just as well really as you’ve got a fair number of pages to cover – 890 in my proof copy to be exact. This means that if you’re a slowish reader you will have to keep your après work activities to a minimum for at least a month just to get the book finished.

Is it worth the effort? Well, when you’ve finished you feel as if you’ve been on a particularly strenuous but informative holiday to a number of exotic locations which, for a variety of unfortunate reasons, many of us would hesitate to visit nowadays. And as an additional incentive to some of us, our attempts to keep track of Russian mobsters, Islamic extremists, IT geniuses and homicidal maniacs provide our little grey cells with a real work-out, which we know is excellent for the preservation of the mental faculties in old age.

So get comfortable, ensure you’ve got a good supply of chocolate biscuits and tea/ Campari and soda (select according to season and personal taste) and go for it. Tolstoy it ain’t – but now and again a bit of honest escapism in the form of a chunky paperback dealing with murder and global terrorism is just what it takes to raise the spirits. Cheers!

Gwyneth for the TripFiction Team

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