Book Fifty Three 2014: 

I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes

I’ll be honest, out of every genre of the bookreadin’ I find it the hardest to find thrillers that I really, genuinely can engage with and lose myself in. It happens every now and then – Douglas Kennedy’s The Big Picture was one, Robert Harris’ Fatherland another, I read and very much enjoyed the first of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books last year and even *says it in a whisper* The DaVinci Code…

I’d heard so much good stuff about this I thought it was going to be a near-impossible task to live up to the hype, yet here we are with me and a huge satisfied smile on my face after 900 pages or so…

I Am Pilgrim is a cracking, cracking thriller that is one part “terrorist attempting to bring down western civilisation” yarn, one part “I used to be in the CIA, I escaped and now they drag me back in” fun and one part travelogue around some of the most inaccessible parts of the world.

I cannot recommend it highly enough if you’re looking for a huge, chunky rattling thriller. I read it in 2 days, it will undoubtedly be made into a very poor movie.

Don’t wait for that, buy the book.