A tome with the stature and heft of "The Year Of The Locust" is seldom pedestaled on bookstore shelves, but precious space is being cordoned off for the emplacement of a once-in-a-decade epic. It’s an imposing piece of literary sculpture, stately and solemn like Lincoln’s memorial. But simultaneously, exhilarating in its audacious scope and bold line, like Washington’s bright, white obelisk.
Everyone will be reading Terry Hayes’ thriller, a decade in the making. But fear not, you’ll easily join the coming viral mass-movement, drawn by pace, plot, and structure, to devour "The Year Of The Locust" in binges that obliterate any sensation of the earth’s rotation, the arc of the nuclear blast furnace of our yellow star, or the kids nagging for dinner.
Eight hundred pages will pass easily and inevitably like the blue waves on the crushed crystal sands of the gulf. The end will come too soon — complete, but teasing for more.
Hayes’ protagonist, Kane, is a Denied Access Area spy for the CIA. An operative in the most rarefied air. Adept at infiltrating forbidding landscapes, which host some of the world’s most austere totalitarian governments. Kane is a master spy and equipped by nature, and the CIA’s calculating nurture, he engages with the world’s most dangerous terrorists and assassins on their own turf. His mission is to penetrate the Iranian border and meet with an informant possessing information on a "spectacular" — a national security event on the scale of 9/11.
Having done the impossible, Kane stalks the burning sands of Iran’s vast wastelands accompanied by two faithful, struggling burros. He dubs his lead donkey, an arthritic beast of burden, Sakab, meaning “a horse so graceful it moves like running water.” Sakab struggles with his degenerating joints, stumbles over rocky steeps, yet manages to save Kane’s life as all three teeter on treacherous slopes.
Auspiciously, Kane is armed with an accurized AK47, equipped with a revolutionary GPS-enabled scope. With this weapon, Kane navigates a sea of sand, arriving at a scene of horror and brutality thought to have become extinct with the emblazoned shields and rusted gladius Hispaniensis of Rome.
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Through Kane’s rifle scope, he witnesses a crucifixion. The condemned man’s arms splayed wide and nails driven through his curled hands by the insensate cruelties of ISIS thugs. Around the erected cross the crucified man’s wife and two daughters wail and struggle against the chains that fix them in place at the base of the cross. Their bonds strategically daggered into the smoldering sand, just far enough to deny them the comfort of an embrace.
On this scene of blood and cruel sport, Kane weighs the mission, his soul, and perhaps the fate of uncounted thousands.
ISIS guards mill about under the blaze of a Persian sun. And, Kane floats the crosshairs of his rifle on their turbaned skulls, caresses the firm trigger, honed to break like glass, and then makes his decision — what will he become in this pristine and molten moment that separates the slag from the purest metals? Well, you’ll have to grab your copy of "The Year Of The Locust" to find out. But, believe me, that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
Hayes has been absent from the thrillerverse for a decade. So, Townhall asked him the obvious question: where has he been all this time? He’s been busy, writing scripts for blockbuster Hollywood movies like "Mad Max 2 — Road Warrior," "Dead Calm," "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome," "Payback," "Vertical Limit," and more. But, his absence from the thriller genre is due to some very personal reasons, and the prioritization of family above professional pursuits.
Hayes told Townhall, “What I realized was, you teach them [children] by how you live your own life…because they are observing all the time. The worst thing…is if they think you’re being hypocritical.” Clearly, Hayes’ family means everything to him, and raising his children was far more important than producing another critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling novel.
Those who have been mean-spirited about the delay shouldn’t judge without knowing the facts. Conversely, Hayes is grateful to have a fanbase clamoring for more — "The Year Of The Locust" is a thriller on the heroic and prosaic scale of Homer’s "Odyssey." A work that justifies the arid decade of wandering in the wilderness by Hayes’ fandom.
Townhall also asked Hayes about the process of writing a novel on such a vast scale. Hayes gave one of the most fascinating and elucidating answers on the topic. "I’ve got this massive girder." Hayes referenced his previous master work, "I Am Pilgrim," in describing the foundational "girder" that creates the essential structure in his narratives.
"The girder is a resurrection story. Bringing a man back [Murdoch], he’s retired, it’s putting him through a terrible thing..and he lives and does something of great benefit to the world. That’s the girder." Hayes goes on to describe the subplots as longer and shorter pieces of steel that make up the structure of his novels. "Some of which are just inches long like, set up a joke here, pay it off five paragraphs later…the girder is 700-800 pages long." In this way, he builds his colossal structures.
"The Year Of The Locust" poignantly and accurately navigates the political and tactical realities of living life in "the forrest of mirrors."The duplicitous and endlessly evolving world of secret agents, terrorists, and nation states. Hayes’ protagonist Kane reflects, "Of course, the surveillance state is a terrible thing — until it’s approaching midnight and you are trying to track the most dangerous man in the world." Hayes sums in a sentence the eternal struggle between liberty and national security. That sentence is the gravamen of the most virulent debates we witness in today’s politics. "The Year Of The Locust" is pregnant with meaning, and is a boundless adventure.
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