Hello,
At about 625 pages, this book is at least 100 pages too long. It should have had a more thorough editing process, it just repeats itself over and over and over again. There has been a lot of praise for this book, but it seems just as much hatred. This seems to be one of those books that people either love or hate. I believe I'm one of those who's right in the middle. Some of the descriptive language is amazing- check out it's Pinterest page. But again it repeats itself way too much and runs on way too long.
This is my review for "I Am Pilgrim", which was released on May 27th, 2014. I had the ability to read the book before publication. However I got busy and just wasn't able to get into it. I just barely finished reading this book now. Thanks to NetGalley.com and also the publisher, Atria Books, for the free access.
A mysterious narrator, Eddy, (adopted name: Scott Murdoch or Brodie) who worked for the ultra secret American government agency called The Division. For ease of this review I'm just going to refer to the protagonist and narrator of this book as Eddy. After Eddy left the Division, he wrote a book under a different false identity about some of his more challenging criminal cases. He didn't write the book for fame or money, he just wanted to share some of his expertise. Unfortunately writing this book didn't exactly work out like he expected.
In this book Eddy also went by the names Scott Murdoch, Jude Garret (name of the author on the book Eddy wrote), Brodie Wilson (name used while in Turkey), Richard Gibson, Ramon (a name that Ben mockingly called him) and finally Michael John Spitz (the name used in the trap to catch the Saracen.
Eddy's life has been anything but easy, his Dad walked out on him before he was born, never to be seen again. His mother was murdered in their apartment just off Eight Mile road in Detroit. He then washed up with adoptive parents Bill and Grace Murdoch. Bill was great to him, although he didn't recognize it at the time. And the less said about Grace the better.
He was recruited out of college by people saying they represented the Rand Corporation. After passing an evaluation, he found out who he was really working for, the Division. Again I love the insightful language in this book. Eddy talking about why The Division would consider him: "I was a perfect candidate for the secret world. I was smart, I had always been a loner, and I was damaged deep in my soul." Following that Eddy had 4 years of training with The Division. (Although the book goes on way too long, some of the imagery is fantastic.)
His first major assignment was killing his boss, a senior US intelligence officer, who was about to sell names of valuable Russian informers to the KGB's successor, the FSB. Again more great descriptive language about killing his boss, "a vicious wind howling out of the steppes, hot, carrying with it a stench of betrayal."
After undergoing a thorough interrogation regarding killing his own boss, he then was named to replace his boss. At age 29 he was named the youngest Rider of the Blue in Division history. The Rider of the Blue runs the section of The Division out of London.
Eddy left The Division after the tragic events of 9/11, he was in Geneva on that fateful day. Haunted by the memory of an earlier mission to Thailand where Eddy had met a Buddhist monk. The monk related to him about how the local villagers catch a monkey. The monk explains the villagers set a vase "They fill the bottom with nuts and whatever else monkeys like to eat." In the night the monkey climbs out of the tree and slips his hand through the long neck of the vase. The monk continues "He grabs the sweets and his hand makes a fist. That means it's too big to get back up the narrow neck and he's trapped." The next day the villagers hit the monkey in the head.
The monk explains the story saying "It's a Zen story, of course"... "The point is- if you want to be free all you have to do is to let go." That memory came back to him at the age of 32 and he knew he wanted something more than working in the secret world. To leave some kind of reminder of his past, Eddy wrote a book. Based on his past cases, it's about "modern investigative techniques".
Ben Bradley, a long time acquaintance of the narrator, who knows that Eddy has a certain level of expertise. Bradley is a true American patriot and a hero of 9/11. Eddy refers to Bradley as "one person with genuine natural authority". Bradley jokingly refers to the narrator (Eddy) as Ramon, which is a jibe.
The female killer, who used Eddys's book, to help her in killing a prostitute in a seedy hotel. This female killer was early 20s, about five-eight, a great body and someone that changed appearance a lot. She dressed up as Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn Manson and many other celebrities. It was a well trained woman that killed "Eleanor". The unknown killer had a library card, she only checked out one book. That book being Eddy's book, written under the pen name Jude Garrett. Eddy realized she had used the book to kill her victim.
The female killer was headed to work on 9/11 when the first plane hit the first building. Since she was late to work she realized people would think that she had arrived and died in the attacks. She took that as the perfect time to disappear, live off the grid at the Eastside Inn.
He also writes about the seedy hotel room where we first see the handy work of our assassin. He talks about this hotel as a "walk-up in New York- thread bare curtains, cheap furniture, a table loaded with tina (crystal meth) and other party drugs." That becomes her modus operandi throughout the book.
Eddy refers to the woman who was killed as "Eleanor", based on a line from the Beatles song "Eleanor Rigby". When Eleanor was killed, her killer put her in an acid bath that ate off her face. So Eddy calls her Eleanor because of this lyric: "Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door."
The female killer and the Saracen were allies. The main enemy in this book that Eddy was tasked to stop is known as Saracen The Saracen's real name was Zakari al-Nassouri, he was a boy that was radicalized and had to witness his own father's execution. The Saracen joined a mosque that was a cell of the Muslim Brotherhood. He later fought and was a hero in the Afghanistan war. Over one million people died, but the Saracen didn't.
The Saracen had a mentor Abdul Mohammad Khan, who was a vicious person. He buried two people who had betrayed him in cement. That was placed in a prominent place so that people would remember not to betray Khan. Khan later provided him his three test subjects for the small pox experiment.
The Saracen was a patient man, waiting for better opportunities that would lead to much destruction someday. He killed Bashar Tass in Syria, he was the deputy director of the Syrian Insitute for Advanced Medicine. Tass was killed more because of his weight than anything else, The Saracen needed someone near his weight so he could fool the buildings security system.
The Saracen practiced how to kill people with a weaponized strain of smallpox. It was built to beat a vaccine and kill as many Americans as possible. The Saracen tried out the vicious strain on three innocents, including a pregnant woman. After those 3 people died a miserable death, the Saracen burned the structure down.
Three helicopters with twenty Australian military landed in the deserted village where the smallpox experiment had been held. The Saracen barely escaped with his life. Pete Keating was the man of the hour here, Keating almost came closest to catching The Saracen. He injured his hip in his escape. This encounter was the only time "the Saracen was ever seen by either civilian or military authorities. Until I met him of course."
Some of the powerful imagery used by Hayes in "I Am Pilgrim": "Red Square with a hot wind howling across, my mother's bedroom on the wrong side of Eight Mile... a man waiting to kill me in a group of ruins known as the Theater of Death."
From Pinterest
'T. E. Lawrence – Lawrence of Arabia – knew something about that part of the world and the nature of men. He said that the dreamers of the day were dangerous people – they tried to live their dreams to make them come true.'
Read more here: https://www.pinterest.com/whatshalliread/i-am-pilgrim/
The President of the USA is James Grosvenor. A widower for 7 years, a businessman for nearly all his working life. Other characters of note the Dodges, whose murder was used as an excuse for Brodie Wilson (Eddy) to find out more about the Saracen. Ingrid Kohl, one of the names of the mysterious female narrator. The Whisperer, the right hand man of President Grosvenor, and contact of Eddy while he was in the field in Bodrum.
I give this book a grade of because of C-. Some of the writing was so fantastic and we really got the sense for the goodness of Eddy, he really was trying to do the right thing. As much as I admired him, there was just too much superfluous details clogging up the story. The two biggest things that hurt this book is it's desperate need of further editing and how it never seemed to end.
themusicaddict
