The Year of the Locust, a review by Joanna

Told in the same infuriating omniscient first person narrative style as the last book, this has our protagonist, a former submarine captain now Denied Access Area spy for the CIA, known variously as Kane or Ridley travelling to the Middle East to track down a terrorist, previously believed dead, who is planning a major atrocity on American soil – a “spectacular.”

I confess it took me several chapters to realise that this was not actually a sequel to IAP. Allowing for the fact that it’s eight years since I read that one, the hero seems to have exactly the same bland personality and tells his story in the same meandering way: he describes events that he only heard or read about later as if he were actually there, including the thoughts of the various characters that he could not possibly have known about, digressing here, there and everywhere. I don’t know why he couldn’t have Kane tell his story in first person and write the other chapters in third person, like more accomplished writers do. It doesn’t seem to have bothered other reviewers but it kept me from immersing myself in the plot.

Next, the plot. Really this should’ve been three different books – the first third is the action spy thriller that everyone was waiting for, and apart from the wittering and constant humble-bragging, is a pretty good story. “I was (minor spoiler) shot in the foot so could only run twenty miles a day but they sent me back into the fray because there wasn’t a single other spy in the whole of the CIA who could do what I do…” (I’m paraphrasing obvs, but the whole book is like that. Yes Kane, you’re just so super…)

The middle section, when Kane is back in America, is really slow and mostly irrelevant. Then we shift genre into sci-fi for the last third – which if it had been a completely different book written under a different name would’ve been a fun adventure story. (While this could be classed as a spoiler, I think anyone thinking of reading this should know in advance that there’s a completely fantastical time-travel scenario here – so they can decide in advance if that’s what they want in a spy thriller.) Unfortunately Hayes is so determined to have Kane save the world again, that all three stories are forced into this one overly long book by outrageously contrived coincidences. He also completely misunderstands the multiple future premise of time travel, and thus blithely and unnecessarily leaves certain characters to a horrible future.

Ultimately, if you think you would enjoy this because you loved IAP, maybe try the Mitch Rapp books by Vince Flynn instead. If you’re not phased by preposterous implausibility, try anything by Matthew Reilly. If you have loads of time and or money to spare, go ahead and read this, but don’t say I didn’t warn you!