身為中央情報局「禁入區域」間諜，多年都使用代號「坎恩」的情報員奉令隻身前往巴基斯坦、伊朗、阿富汗交界處。在這片惡地裡，有一名當地男子掌握了攸關西方安全的重大情報，坎恩接到的指令是找到這名男子──白人，身高和國籍不明，名字未知，樣貌難辨，留下的指紋也極可能動手術改變……
我聽過傳言說最近一次針對「魔法師」的搜尋行動同樣以失敗告終，我猜想早晚會有個美國情報界的菁英成員會明白，若要對他展開新的追捕行動，我大概擁有所有所需的技能。
由於一連串怪異的狀況，只有一小群間諜專精於進入所謂的「拒訪區域」──完全在敵對勢力控制下的地方，比方俄羅斯、敘利亞、北韓、伊朗，還有巴基斯坦的部落地帶──所以我比大部分人更了解一個被追殺的人要如何避免被發現。
簡單來說，「魔法師」顯然很懂得如何躲藏。我也很懂。

A breakneck race against time...and an implacable enemy. An anonymous young woman murdered in a run-down hotel, all identifying characteristics dissolved by acid. A father publicly beheaded in the blistering heat of a Saudi Arabian public square. A notorious Syrian biotech expert found eyeless in a Damascus junkyard. Smoldering human remains on a remote mountainside in Afghanistan. A flawless plot to commit an appalling crime against humanity. One path links them all, and only one man can make the journey. Pilgrim .'

Can you commit the perfect crime?
Pilgrim is the codename for a man who doesn't exist. The adopted son of a wealthy American family, he once headed up a secret espionage unit for US intelligence. Before he disappeared into anonymous retirement, he wrote the definitive book on forensic criminal investigation.
But that book will come back to haunt him. It will help NYPD detective Ben Bradley track him down. And it will take him to a rundown New York hotel room where the body of a woman is found facedown in a bath of acid, her features erased, her teeth missing, her fingerprints gone. It is a textbook murder - and Pilgrim wrote the book.
What begins as an unusual and challenging investigation will become a terrifying race-against-time to save America from oblivion. Pilgrim will have to make a journey from a public beheading in Mecca to a deserted ruins on the Turkish coast via a Nazi death camp in Alsace and the barren wilderness of the Hindu Kush in search of the faceless man who would commit an appalling act of mass murder in the name of his God.