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.