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

Perestroika

 Joao Cerqueira has written eight novels, and his most recent, due for publication on 1/24/24 in the UK and Canada, is entitled Perestroika: An Eye for an Eye, a Tooth for a Tooth. He has received numerous awards for his prior books. In a private correspondence to me, he wrote, “Because of the Russian aggression against Ukraine and the threat of a third world war, I think this book addresses issues of critical interest in discussion on the problems of today’s world.” In my opinion, Mr. Cerqueira has achieved his goal of producing just such a historical novel. In addressing the element of war between real information and disinformation to which the world is now subjected, the author began his novel with a question that Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?”

 

He writes of a fictional country Slavia which is located in part of the territory of current day Slovakia and The Czech Republic. The country was under the control of the Soviet Union until it’s disintegration and was then subjected to the disorganization and criminal control that followed. Along the lines of recent European history, the author writes “this is a novel of revenge, redemption, and catharsis.” The character who became the president of the Slavia had been a criminal before and after Perestroika (greater awareness of economic markets and the ending of central planning). He used well-developed characters that were compelling, some who were in positions of authority and others who were just victims of those in power. In addition to history and politics, the novel incorporated arts, tragedy, humor, and human rights. The criminal president, Ivan Fiorov was inspired by both Putin and Trump.

 

Cerqueira’s novel is an important story, and it brings to life the suffering that is inherent with such a totalitarian state. It was often times painful to read about the tragedies and inhumanities of the times, but I thought the telling of this story was believable and authentic.

Prequel

 

Prequel, An American Fight Against Fascism, is Rachel Maddow’s latest book. She does not mention anything about the current political divisiveness that we are witnessing. She does mention the former president. However, she puts forward that this divisiveness is not new in the US, and then she proceeds to give evidence of when the democracy has been threatened before by those who believe in fascism. Most likely, it’s an aspect of American history that you’ve not heard before. Just as has been the case during the course of our country, especially since the beginning of WWI and then increasing significantly before, during, and after WWII, fascist forces have been active influencers, often behind the scenes. Those forces are present again today and are a serious threat to the continuation of American’s fragile democracy.

 

So much of this information was familiar to me, in part as the result of being a student of American history, and as the result of a book I reviewed in August 2023, Mother, Daughter, Traitor, Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal. That fictional novel revolved around some of the same characters that Maddow’s nonfiction book identified as being the enemies of as well as the heroes who were responsible for saving the democracy during WWII and the post war era.

 

I must emphasize the importance of these themes. If you read this material, you’ll learn important details about America’s contemporary political troubles. Maddow’s book gets my strongest recommendation.

Falling Night

Phil Clarke is a new author and he has been working on this story, Falling Night, since 1994. It has to do with a fictional aid volunteer in a fictional African country during very disturbing internal conflict among tribes, as well as the efforts of the United Nations and various aid agencies to get in control of the conflict. Clarke certainly has the background to write such a book. He provided such efforts over a period of years in Somalia, Rwanda, Congo, Liberia, and Sudan. In my opinion, those aspects of the book were believable. In the novel, a British aid worker, Alan Swales, was dissatisfied with his life in England and with his live-in relationship. In a hasty decision he decided he could make a positive difference in the world by helping the relief effort to feed the starving population of Kugombwala. He called a relief agency and was quickly hired.

 

Clarke is a capable writer and tells an important and shocking story, although there is one important caveat. I should have been suspicious when I read the Publisher’s Note which suggested that the work of Jesus Christ was behind this story. In the first half of the book, minimal mention was made of a religious theme other than Swales had always been an avowed atheist. It was about halfway through that the character of Swales began a religious conversion, using a belief in Christianity to manage his own thoughts and feelings as the result of witnessing horrendous human trauma, as well as being the victim of such trauma himself.

 

I think this story of this war-torn country and its desperate population would stand on its own without any reference to religious principles. In fact, the reference to the protagonist’s religion beca theme the dominant part of the book’s second half. Probably this is a book that should be sold in Christian bookstores, and without editing out those parts of the story, I don’t see Falling Night being a candidate for a wider audience.

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.

Code Red: A Mitch Rapp Novel by Kyle Mills

By my count, this is book #21 in the Mitch Rapp saga. Serious longevity when it comes to a book character.

Mitch is realizing that a career bouncing mostly around the Middle East and Russia ensuring the best interests of the US remain foremost in the world order is probably coming to an end. In previous books, we see Mitch settling down, sort of, with wife Claudia and daughter Anna (and most all his trusted crew) in the hunt country of western Virginia where he has built a nearly impregnable fortress of a ‘neighborhood’. Add to that a ranch in South Africa when Virginia becomes either too tiresome or dangerous.

Of course, the US is in constant need of his skills. In the previous book (Oath of Loyalty), a drug kingpin (from Guatemala or was it Honduras?) was brought down but in doing so, Mitch had to make a deal with the devil, a Mexican cartel chief, and perhaps the world’s most powerful cartel boss, Damian Losa who directed Mitch were to find his target. Losa now has a chip in his pocket. Mitch owes him a favor. A massive favor.

A new drug has appeared. Captagon. While the drug has been around long enough to be the preferred escape in the Middle East, a new variant has popped up. While this new item still produces the expected high that young desperate Middle Eastern youth gravitate toward, it has been re-compounded to be far more addictive, packs worse withdrawal, and foremost, once one gets addicted, it also sends the user into some intense and often fatal psychoses.

Losa has obtained some samples of this new variety of Captagon so that his chemists can determine its makeup. Problem is that his people say that while this new drug can be replicated, the cost to start production from the ground up would be so high to be too expensive for all but the wealthiest users. Whomever is making it now effectively has a lock on the logistics of its production. Losa figures that if it’s too costly to make, maybe he can make a (significant) buck by opening his worldwide distribution network saving the makers that hassle. The proverbial win-win in the illicit drug business.

Losa knows that the drug begins its life in Syria, a place where traditional cartels have little if any influence. And a man like Losa knows his intelligence network is out of its league when it comes to places like Syria. What Losa needs is someone who knows the Middle East and can get in and try to negotiate a deal whereby the locals maintain production and use Losa’s distribution network.

This is where Mitch comes in. Losa decides to recruit Mitch to be his negotiator. If Mitch agrees, his debt with Losa will be fully paid. Mitch reluctantly agrees. Losa’s people set up Mitch’s legend as a weeny Canadian lawyer hired specifically for this one job. Mitch’s boss at the CIA, Irene Kennedy, isn’t happy and lets Mitch know that while she wants progress reports, he will have absolutely zero Agency assets or support.

He’s entirely on his own. His legend holds as he enters Syria and starts to work his way up the food chain to find the head dog so he can make his pitch. But being who he is, trouble has a way of finding Mitch. In most every confrontation, he successfully manages to play the milquetoast Canadian lawyer. But the closer he gets to the top, the harder it is to pretend to be meek. Mitch is still Mitch.

What he does learn is that the Syrians really aren’t behind this drug. The developers aren’t looking to become wealthy (I’m not going to tell you who. You’ll have to read the book for that detail). They want to sell the drug cheap, addict the youth of Europe and eventually the US making the west vulnerable from within resulting in a collapse of the social order leading (with any luck) to internal destruction. Waging war without firing a shot.

Rapp alerts Losa what he’s learned. While he went in knowing he was expendable, the payoff was mighty - get rid of that chip he owes to Losa. When Mitch he learns who might be pulling that trigger, he does off on his own. In short,  the last 50 pages of the book reveal Rapp’s true colors and character.

Classic Mitch Rapp. Mills delivers again. The foreword of book tells us that Kyle Mills has been carrying the freight for the Mitch Rapp saga for 10 years (after Vince Flynn's death) and it looks like this may be his last. Who’ll pick up the banner remains unknown. Given the popularity of the Mitch Rapp books, I fully suspect that the publisher (Emily Bestler Books) probably has a quality writer linedup. We’ll just have to wait until next year.

ECD

Lessons in Chemistry

 

My next audiobook was Lessons in Chemistry, a debut novel by Bonnie Garmus. I had seen the book title on the NY Times list of fiction best sellers for a while. I heard about it from two other sources, one of my wife’s book clubs and the podcast Sisters-in-Law (which has been one of my favorite sources of political and legal news for the last three years). There have been rave reviews for Lessons in Chemistry everywhere. It’s not a murder mystery although there are important deaths throughout the novel which help carry the plot along. Not to be boring, but this is another positive rare about the book.

 

The story takes place in the late 50’s and early 1960’s and it’s about the brilliant research scientist Elizabeth Zott. That was a time when women were widely regarded as having no place in the world of science. They were mistreated, their ideas were disregarded or stolen, and their research papers were almost universally denied by publishers. That plot line rung bells for me because I saw this misogyny happen to the women in my medical school class. At the orientation our freshman year, the chair of the department of OBGYN actually announced that as long as he had been the chair of the department there had never been a woman resident in his program, and as long as he was the chair, there never would be. It was the women in my class who broke that gender barrier upon graduation four years later. There was intense pain that came with this important gain in the medical science world. That is the world that Garmus wrote about. The story was so compelling that it has become a tv series on Apple TV. Today there are more women than men in the medical schools around the country. At least there is some evidence of progress in our troubled world.

 

There is a beautiful love story between Zott and a remarkable chemist, Calvin Evans, who was put up for a Nobel Prize year after year. Also, there was a wonderful subplot about a very smart stray dog who followed Elizabeth home one day, and subsequently became a part of her family.

 

Even if your main genre of choice is murder mysteries, this book deserves your attention. It may be the best book I read in 2023.