The Year of the Locust by Terry Hayes (Bantam, £22)
It has been a decade since screenwriter Hayes’s first novel, the critically acclaimed bestseller I Am Pilgrim: now, after many delays, comes his second. The Year of the Locust starts promisingly, as CIA agent Ridley Kane is tasked with entering Iran by stealth in order to obtain a heads-up about a spectacular act of global terrorism. With vivid descriptions, some terrific action sequences and lashings of suspense, the book ticks all the boxes necessary for a superior geopolitical thriller – and, although it seems vanishingly unlikely that any halfway-decent CIA agent would fail to recognise an obvious reference to the world’s worst industrial accident, leaving readers hanging for more than 100 pages until the characters figure out the likely nature of the attack, there is plenty to entertain and distract you while you drum your fingers. But around three-quarters of the way through and with no prior warning, the plot takes a sideways leap and lands in an entirely different genre, which may leave you not so much intrigued as utterly bewildered.
