Can you commit the perfect crime? Pilgrim is the codename for a man who doesn't exist. The adopted son of a wealthy American family, he once headed up a secret espionage unit for US intelligence. Before he disappeared into anonymous retirement, he wrote the definitive book on forensic criminal investigation. But that book will come back to haunt him. It will help NYPD detective Ben Bradley track him down. And it will take him to a rundown New York hotel room where the body of a woman is found facedown in a bath of acid, her features erased, her teeth missing, her fingerprints gone. It is a textbook murder - and Pilgrim wrote the book. What begins as an unusual and challenging investigation will become a terrifying race-against-time to save America from oblivion. Pilgrim will have to make a journey from a public beheading in Mecca to a deserted ruins on the Turkish coast via a Nazi death camp in Alsace and the barren wilderness of the Hindu Kush in search of the faceless man who would commit an appalling act of mass murder in the name of his God.
Once in a while a book comes along that takes you on a journey. It sweeps you out to sea, chews you up, spits you out and all of a sudden you emerge five days later, still in your pyjamas and wondering when the food in fridge went off. I have read books that I’ve enjoyed lately, but nothing so truly immersive and enjoyable as I Am Pilgrim.
Pilgrim is a man of many names and identities. He belongs to the secret world, where politics reign supreme and national security is paramount. When a grizzly murder is discovered in a dingy New York hotel Pilgrim sees it as a textbook case. He should know, he wrote the book. From here the plot unfolds, leading Pilgrim from the streets of Paris, through the Hindu Kush, all the way to Turkey, with many twists and turns, and some unexpected revelations.
The pace of the narrative is absolutely perfect. It flows smoothly, and even at such a length (over 700 pages long!) none of the information seems superfluous or unnecessary. That is not to say the book is perfect; it does suffer from some annoying habits in writing like a large number of “if only I’d payed more attention to”s or “this information would prove valuable later on”‘s, but apart from that the writing style was refined, concise and really kept me engaged.
Will I Am Pilgrim win any literature prizes? Probably not. But it was the most fun I’ve had reading a book in a very long time, and I really can’t recommend it enough.
