See all titles by Terry Hayes
This
astonishing debut espionage thriller depicts the collision course
between two geniuses, one a tortured hero and one a determined
terrorist, in a breakneck story reminiscent of John le Carré and Robert
Ludlum at their finest.
PILGRIM is the code name for a
world class and legendary secret agent. His adversary is a man known
only to the reader as the Saracen. As a young boy, the Saracen barely
sees his dissident father beheaded in a Saudi Arabian public square. But
the event marks him for life and creates a burning desire to destroy
the special relationship between the US and the Kingdom. Everything in
the Saracen’s life from this moment forward will be in service to jihad.
At the novel’s opening, we find
ourselves in a seedy hotel near Ground Zero. A woman lies face down in a
pool of acid, features melted off her face, teeth missing, fingerprints
gone. The room has been sprayed down with DNA-eradicating antiseptic
spray. All the techniques are pulled directly from Pilgrim's book, a
cult classic of forensic science written under a pen name.
In offering the NYPD some casual
assistance with the case, Pilgrim gets pulled back into the intelligence
underground. What follows is a thriller that jockeys between
astonishingly detailed character study and breakneck globetrotting. The
author shifts effortlessly from Pilgrim’s hidden life of leisure in
Paris to the Saracen’s squalid warrior life in Afghanistan, from the
hallways of an exclusive Swiss bank to the laboratories of a nefarious
biotech facility in Syria.
The inevitable encounter between
Pilgrim and the Saracen will come in Turkey, around the murder of a
wealthy American, in a thrilling, twisting, beautifully orchestrated
finale.
Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review."
Suspense Magazine
"The best book of 2014."