Review of I am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes

This book is about a two men, who have each had a parent murdered, and are pitted against each other when one, a terrorist (the Saracen), is set on the destruction of the Saudi Arabian royal family, intending to infect the USA with a deadly virus as a way to destabilise the Middle East, and the other, a retired member of the US secret service (Pilgrim), is sent to stop him. The stakes are the lives of millions of people and one particular child.

The book scored 7.76 in the Monday group and 8.5 in the Tuesday group. Overall, the book was enjoyed but the few that didn’t enjoy it, sited the two main violent scenes or felt it was too complicated. It’s great that we can discuss such opposite opinions, as most described it as a page turner, cleverly constructed with many threads that you needed to follow closely.

The author built tension, only to switch you to another characters activities allowing you some respite, before again increasing the pace and weaving in more complexity to the book. It was described as a rollercoaster, and such was the tension before the torture scene, one member had to stop reading and come back to it later. The quality of the writing was so good that as the pace slowed down at the end of the book, you were still captivated as the threads were pulled together and all story lines finished off.

The book was so engaging that several members revealed that reading the book had led to several late nights as they did not want to end the reading session until they found out what happened in that chapter or in one case, a member spent nearly all day, breaking only for tea and food.

There were some touching parts of the book; the relationship with Pilgrim and the father that adopted him, the young boy with down’s and his interaction with the Pilgrim. This was balanced with the very well written, murder of the institute director, the hostages that were subjected to experimentation (after discussion thought that aid workers would be aware of risks when they go to troubled areas to help) and finally the torture scene. There was much discussion whether people are trained to resist such practices and how we would react to the foot torture and the water boarding, it was agreed we would give up the information before we got to it😊

Another impressive aspect was the way the author was able to get sympathy for the “bad guys” and dislike of the “good guys”. The institute’s director that met an untimely end when not at fault, was not liked. Leyla Cumali was originally viewed with suspicion, but the feeling did soften as the story progressed. Even the Saracen started off as a sympathetic character but as we got into the book, we all turned against him given the extreme lengths he was willing to go. The Pilgrim was interesting, the “good guy” who built strong relationships with many of the characters we liked, Battleboi, the readers felt that his pardon was well deserved, Ben, the Whistler and the President, but ultimately was the Pilgrim a nice person? The lengths he was prepared to go with Saracen’s son led to conversations; would Ben have gone through with it? Would we and in what circumstances, what if it was our son? What would we be capable of to save millions of people?

The murder in New York and then the subsequent one in Greece was a clever subplot that bought three of the main characters together. There was disappointment that a sequel has not already been written to locate Dodge’s murderer once Pilgrim comes out of second retirement.

As group leaders we were intrigued about how the violent scenes were received when compared to Iron House (a previous book). The context and brevity of the violence was a very difficult balance and was not seen as gratuitous and most members of the group thought the balance was perfect.

The plot being so believable and relatable made this such a great read and most said they would read more from the author. There were many discussions on the state of world security following the line in the book stating that export of manufacturing from the US, had put its security at risk. The way the virus was going to be distributed led to a discussion on the possible abuse of vaccines, just as the flu jab season is about to start! Scary times, let’s hope there are real Pilgrims working today.