The Year of the Locust by Terry Hayes

It was 2014 when I Am Pilgrim, Hayes’ first thriller, was published. A beast at over 600 pages. Masterfully written . . . The length was never an issue because it was so well done. Now, 10 years later, Hayes finally has his second thriller. Be ready as it too is an even bigger beast at just under 800 pages (in paperback).

His code name is Kane. He is a rare agent for the CIA. Only a few are listed as a Denied Access Area agent. These guys go where the footing is the most treacherous, do the job by whatever means necessary, and get the hell out. Then do it again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Think of them as America’s version of MI6’s 00 stable of agents.

Kane's task is a high-risk exfiltration of a Pakistani asset with information critical to the west. Info about the next generation ISIS called The Army of The Pure. Kane is to get in. Meet up with the asset. Get out. The journey in is fraught with danger at every turn. The exfil fails and Kane must evade capture.

But he wants to go back. The Army of the Pure is too dangerous to just sit back and see how it evolves. Especially after stumbling across its leader, the battle-hardened ex-Spetsnaz colonel Roman Kazinsky.

There are a ton of moving parts in this complex epic thriller. From the Pakistanis, Iranians, Afghans, CIA, the CIA mission planners, pit stops across Russia and the -Stans to Siberia. Lot of balls to keep in the air. The book is effectively in two parts. The first part is about trying to get the asset out. The second part is the cat and mouse game played between Kane and Kazinsky. Both parts are expertly developed and presented by Hayes as we'd expect based on how great I Am Pilgram was . . . even though the 2^nd part of Locust kind of goes off the rails.

The ’thriller’ parts of the book are jaw droppingly good. Lots of great characters and action. Maybe even a glimpse at warfare of the future. At around the last 25% of the book, things take a turn into quasi-science fiction. Remember the movie The Final Countdown where a modern-day nuclear carrier gets transported back to the hours before Pearl Harbor? Or the Terminator movies where armies of the future send back soldiers to the past in other to change the future? That’s essentially what happens here. 

I knew ahead of time that time travel was a feature of this book. Having just finished, I asked myself if the story could be told without the time travel and I think it could be, with a little massaging. Bottom line is the spy thriller aspects of the first 3/4 of the book are downright spectacular; hey, it's Terry Hayes of I Am Pilgrim fame. The time travel aspect was, for me, distracting; read a number of other reviews after I finished this today who came to the same conclusion. Up until the 25yr jump to a grim future, Locust was the equal to I am Pilgrim. While this is a big book and you’ll need to make a serious commitment to its length, my bet is that if some producer wanted to make this into a 6-10 part streaming series, it's quite possible that the time travel direction of the story could end up being negotiable. But who am I to say.

Thanks to the good folks at Emily Bestler Books for the advance reader copy. Another winner (mostly) to add to their stable of superior thrillers.

Available February 6, 2024

East Coast Don

The Year of the Locust

 

I may journey around the barn a couple times while writing this review, so be patient. Terry Hayes has now written two books, the first on in 2014 was entitled I Am Pilgrim, and it was given absolutely rave reviews by MRB – a classic spy novel. I’ve been waiting impatiently for a second book, and 10 years later, I now have it, The Year of the Locust. It was worth the wait, although I will later give you one caveat. This is an exciting and well written thriller about a US spy code named Kane. He was a Denied Access Areas spy, meaning that he was called to go into areas in which he only had his own wits and skills to get by and survive – such areas included Syria, North Korea, Iran, Russia, Afghanistan, etc. His real name was Ridley Walker, but the author did not reveal that name until later in the novel because it had no importance to the unfolding of the story.

 

Kane had been seriously wounded in prior encounters in the Denied Access Areas, but he was a legend and was called back into duty because of his remarkable skill with languages. It was clear that he did not always stick to rules of his trade, such as when he intervened to help save the lives of a woman and two daughters when the man of the family, an Iranian traitor, was captured and literally crucified. He should have walked away to protect himself and the mission, but he simply could not do that.

 

Russia was in a race to mine rare earth elements from asteroids and other non-earth locations, elements which had become necessary for everything with a computer. Nearly all of those elements on earth were in China, so Russia had to look elsewhere – and they were being successful at it. The US was eager to stop that progress. That was the essence of the plot.

 

Hayes rounded out the plot with a number of excellent subplots including his girlfriend, an emergency room doctor in DC, his boss at the CIA, the evil forces at work for Russia and Iran, etc. The book is rich with interesting characters who must make important life choices. This is a long book, 760 pages, and I kept turning pages, only putting it down when I had to sleep. Now, the caveat. I was at the ¾ mark of the story when I ran into a problem for me, perhaps not for you. The author then unexpectedly used the device of time travel to carry the story to conclusion. I was attracted to time travel stories as early as the late 1950’s when I was reading “Boys Life” magazines. I could hardly wait for the next issue to see what would happen in those stories. Of course, I loved the “Back to the Future” movie series which used a tongue-in-cheek approach to time travel. I also loved the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon characters of Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman who told time travel stories with the Way Back Machine.

 

As a reader of spy novels, one must suspend reality testing to a certain extent, but I find I can’t go that far with time travel. As an adult, I’ve found it hard to suspend reality enough to buy into that sci-fi aspect of most modern novels. There is one exception to my hesitancy regarding time travel, and that was a novel by Seldon Edwards titled The Little Book, first published in 2008. That story took him 30 years to write, and time travel was the essence of this book based on psychoanalytic principles, as family members traveled back and forth in time, meeting different members of the family at different points of their lives. As a psychoanalyst, that story had meaning for me, although maybe not for others. I thought it was a great book – but I’m on a tangent. I warned you. (Unfortunately, some of the oldest book reviews on this blog were corrupted, so I can’t refer you to my review of Edwards’ book.)

 

I was still invested in Hayes’ story, so I continued on. Time travel happened as the result of unintended consequences of the use of new technology that was needed for Kane to sneak into the processing of the asteroid ores in a very remote area of Russia. The author was able to use this sci-fi device to bring a very satisfying conclusion to the main plot and all of the subplots. Assuming that most spy novel readers don’t have the same aversion to time travel that I have, I’ll tell you this is a great and absorbing story. Thanks to David Brown at Simon & Schuster for providing this pre-publication novel which will be available very shortly.

I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes

I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes was a 5-star read for me. This is the kind of book that we at Men Reading Books wait for – an international crime/terrorist fiction story with great writing, great characters, and a binding and believable plot line. Hayes wrote numerous screenplays, but this is his first novel, and it’s a remarkable effort. How do a domestic murder and a jihadist plot to bring unbelievable terror to the entire population of the U.S. tie together? The reader does not learn the identity of the protagonist until well into the book, as the author successfully teases that information along. He repeatedly made the most clever use of foreshadowing that I’ve ever seen. This is a book that is in the same rank as the works by Daniel Silva and Frederick Forsythe. I couldn’t give it a higher compliment. The good news is that it’s a great book. The bad news is that you’ll have to wait until late May for it’s release by Atria Books.