'I Am Pilgrim' is exhilarating debut thriller

I AM PILGRIM, by Terry Hayes. Emily Bestler Books/Atria, 612 pp., $26.99.

The first sentence of Terry Hayes' exhilarating debut thriller, "I Am Pilgrim," travels from Red Square to the "wrong side" of Detroit's Eight Mile Road, and somehow you know immediately -- buckle up. This complex, globalized tear through our complex, globalized world shoots from New York to the Black Hills of South Dakota, touches down in London and Geneva, and lands on tiny Santorini, "the most beautiful of all the Greek islands," for a gripping assassination at a world-class restaurant and bar. And that's just the first 50 pages.

It all starts in a seedy Manhattan hotel called the Eastside Inn, where a woman has been discovered with "her throat cut, floating facedown in a bathtub full of sulfuric acid." Along with her face, the acid has dissolved her fingerprints, and any hope of identification vanishes when the police spot a battlefield dental kit containing a pair of recently used extraction forceps. She is, quite literally, a toothless wonder.

Meanwhile, in the remote Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan, a lone extremist called the Saracen has narrowly escaped Australian troops in a deserted village. An indomitable Saudi national who was radicalized in his youth after his father's unjust beheading, the Saracen has left behind the charred remains of three kidnapped aid workers in a fresh, shallow grave. Among the ashes, the troops find a terrifying clue -- a saddle blanket shred that later tests positive for a genetically enhanced, weaponized version of one of the most deadly infectious diseases the world has ever known.

Westerns have taught us that when trouble comes knocking, you usually need a troubled man to answer. Here, Hayes gives us a haunted, laconic hero code-named Pilgrim. Adopted in childhood by a wealthy Connecticut family after his single mother was murdered in their Detroit apartment, Pilgrim made his way to Harvard, where he was recruited into and quickly rose to the top of an elite spy-catching unit based in Berlin.

But after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Pilgrim suddenly found himself obsolete. "I was 32 years old and I realized, through no fault of my own, I had been trained for tank warfare in Europe, only to find the battle was with guerrillas in Afghanistan," he says. "Like it or not, history had passed me by." He soon finds his way to New York, where he's an investigator on the case of the faceless woman. But the "secret world never leaves you," and he's unexpectedly summoned to Washington for a covert mission to save America from the Saracen and his "terror weapon to end all terror weapons." (His work at the Eastside Inn, you'll be pleased to know, doesn't go to waste.)

"I Am Pilgrim" is perhaps the perfect summer read. It delivers terrific suspense and spectacular violence. A horrifying torture account, for example, describes men strapped to steel blocks -- face up. "Unable to stand they thrashed with their arms and legs as they watched liquid concrete poured into the molds." It also contains several clever, stylish lines. Early on, a bad memory "washes ashore like the debris from some distant shipwreck." Later, a man crosses into Syria "with a leather medical bag in one hand, a nondescript suitcase in the other, and a remarkable plan in mind."

Readers often are tempted to skim a big thriller like "I Am Pilgrim," but there's very little here you'll want to miss. Hayes, an award-winning screenwriter ("Road Warrior," "Dead Calm"), masterfully guides readers through an incredibly elaborate, drum-tight plot. Is it plausible? It certainly feels that way while you're in the thick of it. Is it realistic? Let's give the final word on that to spy-thriller king John le Carré, who once said that "every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic."

It's hard to know if this author would draw a distinction between those two ideas. But this much is clear -- "I Am Pilgrim" is an authentic hit that's likely to earn Hayes some serious credibility.