I Am Pilgrim

I’ve just finishing I Am Pilgrim and what a beast of a book it was at nearly 900 pages (!!!) …. because of the length there were times when I got fed up and frustrated with it but that’s merely my own flaws shining through (I’ll address these in a moment) and no reflection on the story which was fast paced and packed full of storylines.

So first I’ll confess my flaws:
1) For someone who loves watching spy movies, I seem to struggle to read them; I’ve tried Vince Flynn, Tom Clancy, Daniel Silva and I’ve always had to force myself to complete the book…. it’s just not my favourite genre
2) I have a short attention span when it comes to stories; my ideal type of novel has a length in the region of 400 pages – allowing me to finish the story in 3 days and move onto the next exciting one.

Back to the story: it’s a tale of a retired spy who I will refer to as ‘Scott’ although as you can image, he has many different aliases due to his chosen profession. The story jumps about from the past to the present but the main gist of the story is: a U.S. detective called Ben reads Scott’s murder textbook whilst he’s in recovery following 9/11, curiosity to find out who the mystery author is ignites his detective passion and he tracks Scott down. Ben and Scott become companions and Scott helps Ben out on a murder case. Whilst the enquiries commence, Scott is pulled back into his old profession to help prevent an impending crisis; a mystery terrorist has been testing a deadly virus on kidnapped aid workers in Hindu Kush. It’s a race against the clock as Scott discovers the identity of the man and his plan to doom the U.S.

What’s beautiful about this story is how Hayes makes the back stories entwine with the main plot, for example the murder case is solved through Scott’s search for the terrorist and both the background to Scott’s life and the Saracen’s life (the terrorist) are explored in great detail. The latter was the most interesting of all – what made the Saracen want to do it.

I don’t think I can compare this to the others I’ve read because it’s definitely in it’s own league! The success of this story is down to the plot complexity, level of research and the array of characters.

If you love the espionage genre, this should be placed at the top of your read list!!! After doing a google, I now know that this is going to be made into a movie by the director that did Kingsman, so if you’re like me and prefer to watch rather than read this genre, you can wait eagerly with me to see how it turns out!

Until next time, Chloé x