I Am Pilgrim

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013

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Part 1, Chapters 1-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-8 Summary

Scott Murdoch describes an unforgettable day. While living in New York City, he arrives at a crime scene in a rundown motel. The corpse cannot be identified because her face and hands have been dissolved in acid solution. The unnamed victim died during sex, and Murdoch finds evidence of drug paraphernalia. He imagines the scene in lurid detail and says that the hotel is “home to […] anybody else with twenty bucks a night” (5). Based on the scene, Murdoch thinks the killer is familiar with his book on forensics and crime.

Murdoch is greeted by his colleague, homicide detective Ben Bradley, and tells him that the killer was almost certainly a woman. The other detectives report that she almost always wears elaborate disguises, changing them daily. Bradley shows Murdoch that the killer removed all of the victim’s teeth to prevent any identification.

The forensics team finds a blockage in the hotel’s plumbing system, recovering some papers the killer hoped to conceal. Murdoch guesses that the numbers on one may be a foreign phone number and confirms the area code for a Turkish town called Bodrum—a place he thinks of with dread. Bradley informs him that the killer checked out Murdoch’s book and says sardonically, “I just want to say thanks—now I’ve got to chase you-by-proxy. The best in the world” (18).

Murdoch recalls the combination of nostalgia and professional pride that led him to write his book, which contained crimes no other expert had ever detailed. Murdoch admits that he wrote it to recall a former life: He was once a covert agent who tracked traitors within the American government’s espionage and intelligence agencies. He was recruited as an aimless undergraduate who studied medicine before turning to psychology, frequently using recreational drugs. Murdoch admits that his background made him uniquely suited to such work: He was orphaned after his mother’s murder, and although he was adopted by wealthy parents, he maintained few strong emotional ties and was comfortable with deception.

Murdoch continues reflecting and describes his early career in Europe, working under the man who then held the title of “Rider of the Blue,” a highly decorated agent in charge of all European operations (23). His life changed forever when a financial-fraud investigation required him to murder his superior in Moscow’s Red Square as children rode a carousel nearby. He remains haunted by the memory, and of his friendship with the man and his family. After weeks of intense interrogation, Murdoch was cleared of all wrongdoing, officially commended by the president, and given his dead mentor’s job.

Part 1, Chapters 1-8 Analysis

The work’s opening section introduces key characters and the work’s genre, especially the conventions Hayes both operates within and subverts. The scene has the feel the feel of a filmed crime procedural, as Murdoch, still unnamed, imagines the plight of the victim and the cunning of the killer. Hayes also introduces his theme of Morality and Contingency as fundamental not only to Murdoch’s investigation but also to the nature of his character. His familiarity with drugs and willingness to imagine a sexual encounter gone horrifically wrong underlines that he is comfortable in morally gray worlds. Somehow, the case intersects with his personal history: His dread at the name of Bodrum suggests that Murdoch is not a believer in coincidence.

As Murdoch explains the origins of his forensic expertise and motives for writing his book, Hayes effectively switches to the novel’s other genre of espionage fiction. Hayes constructs a world where even those tasked with protecting national security can be corrupted and are thus in need of oversight. There are no heroes, merely deeply flawed people attempting to carry out a higher purpose. The Moscow episode, like many throughout the text, reflects Hayes’s background as a screenwriter: He chooses an iconic settling, Moscow’s Red Square, home to its Kremlin and the massive St. Basil’s Cathedral.

The scene may also be an homage to Graham Greene’s The Third Man and its film adaptation by Carol Reed. Though that work is set in Vienna, one of its climactic scenes takes place on a Ferris wheel as two characters ponder whether the deaths of children are acceptable in the name of profit. Murdoch is forced to contemplate the same question with a carousel as a backdrop, separating himself from a carefree world of play and familial love.

Hayes uses the sweeping backdrop to set up the themes of The Nature of Heroism and Loyalty and Family. Murdoch is forced, in the name of principle, to murder a mentor, a kind of father figure. He is eventually celebrated for this, though only after the painful process of interrogation. His own loyalty is considered questionable, and even a presidential commendation does little to assuage his pain. The family he finds in the intelligence community is a lonely one. Whether his work is justified—and the meaning of his memories of emotional bonds that allowed him to endure—are themes that will persist throughout his journey.