Pilgrim and Locust

Terry Hayes, Pockets, I am pilgrim and The year of the locust

There are thrillers that move fast, and then there are thrillers that carry weight.

Terry Hayes writes in the latter category.

I Am Pilgrim doesn’t rush to impress. It builds. Methodically. Patiently. What begins as a procedural unfolds into something broader — a meditation on identity, obsession, and the quiet violence of certainty. The scope is global, but the tension is internal. Hayes understands that the most dangerous conflicts aren’t explosive; they’re deliberate.

Pilgrim himself is an absence as much as a character. A man defined by what he withholds. His intelligence is never ornamental. It’s functional. Cold. Earned. The novel respects the reader enough to demand attention — details matter, time matters, consequences accumulate.

The Year of the Locust (released in some markets under the working title The Grasshopper) continues this trajectory, but shifts tone. Where Pilgrim is controlled and forensic, this book is more volatile. The world is less stable. Power is less centralized. Faith, technology, and geopolitics collide in ways that feel uncomfortably plausible.

Hayes doesn’t simplify. He doesn’t reassure. He lets systems grind against belief until something fractures.

What makes both books linger isn’t the plot mechanics — though they are formidable — but the restraint. Hayes trusts atmosphere. Silence. The long arc. He writes thrillers for readers who notice structure, not just motion.

These are not books you skim.

They reward stillness.

And in a genre often addicted to noise, that feels quietly radical.

The danger isn’t what happens next — it’s what’s already in motion.