The Year of the Locust

I enjoyed Terry Hayes’ first thriller, I Am Pilgrim. I loved the way he built up his story slowly and carefully, charting every step of the way in the villain’s deadly scheme for revenge. And just as methodically charting the efforts to find him and stop him. It was the detail – never too much and never, ever boring – that made the story so gripping.

The same process is at work in this book, except that this time the focus is more on the steps taken to locate a terrorist: disguises, fake documents and background, transport, disguised GPS devices, cloaking technology… Every step of the journey is described in almost hypnotic detail. And even though it’s a thriller, the author is in no rush to tell his story; the narrative is slow and steady, and like its predecessor, never boring.

And then.

At about the three-quarter mark, the story takes a left turn so unexpected, so completely left field, that I was left scratching my head and wondering whether a new book hadn’t somehow been bolted on the one I was reading. I won’t say any more – I don’t want to give away the surprise/shock – but it left me feeling cheated. Everything up to that moment had been so ‘fact-based’- I have no idea whether the CIA possesses the technology described, but the way it’s written I’m willing to believe it – yet the twist is more than a little speculative.

It all changes back by the end, building up to a rousing – satisfying – climax that rounds off the story neatly. And honestly, at close to 700 pages, you can’t say you don’t get your money’s worth. But that twist just niggles. 

It really niggles.