"I Am Pilgrim" by Terry Hayes
Above: "I Am Pilgrim." Terry Hayes. 607 Pages.
While the mass destruction perp, The Saracen, who intends to infect the US public with a genetically engineered, untreatable small pox strain is eventually stopped, so the ancillary New York murder, and a murder of a wealthy US billionaire, vacationing in Bodrum, is also solved by the New York detective and his deep cover agent team mate, Pilgrim.
I completed reading this book today.
Breathtaking thriller I read on the recommendation of Manila Pal.
America's most successful deep cover agent, now retired, comes back from the cold, working against time, to chase down an Islamacist fanatic bent on wiping out the entire United States population with a modified small pox pathogen which is impervious to current small pox vaccines.
Plot to include:
An anonymous young woman murdered in a run-down New York City hotel, shortly after 9/11, all identifying characteristics dissolved by acid.
A father publicly beaten in the blistering heat in a Jeddah public square... witnessed by a fourteen year old son, now susceptible to growing sentiment for revenge as he matures.
A notorious Syrian biotech expert found eyeless in a Damascus junkyard.
Smoldering human remains on a remote mountainside in Afghanistan.
A flawless plot to commit an appalling crime against humanity.
The novel is set in Paris, New York City, Jeddah, Afghanistan, Beirut, Frankfurt and Bodrum.
There is a subsidiary plot.:
Our hero deep cover agent, is tracked down by an ardent New York City detective, because he (the deep cover agent) wrote wrote a book, using a pseudonym, about his trade craft learnings... a book so good that the NYC detective, a symposium organizer, just had to have the author as a symposium speaker. The deep cover agent, distressed at having been outed while living in Paris, nonetheless, was impressed with the detective's detective work in seeking him out. They become friends and later collaborate on a murder in a New York City hotel.
A clue on the scene of the NYC murder, a scrap of paper found in the toilet piping, with a Bodrum area code, provides cover for the two of them, with the support of Turkish authorities, to go to Bodrum where a link to the larger mass destruction pending crime has been found.
On arrival in Bodrum the two sleuth friends discover that there is a connection between both crimes in the persona of a lady Turkish detective.
While the mass destruction perp, The Saracen, who intends to infect the US public with a genetically engineered, untreatable small pox strain is eventually stopped, so the ancillary New York murder, and a murder of a wealthy US billionaire, vacationing in Bodrum, is also solved by the New York detective and his deep cover agent team mate, Pilgrim.
"I Am Pilgrim," is a page tuner, at six hundred plus pages, longer than most books of this genre. I liked reading about the city settings, several in which I had lived: New York City, Paris, and Beirut. I have been to Bodrum several times. I probably won't make it, however, to Jeddah or the mountains of Afghanistan though one gets a good sense of both those places by reading this book..