William Peter Blatty's Dimiter starts in the torture chambers of Albania, "the world's most oppressive and isolated totalitarian state", according to the dust jacket. There, a man known only as "the Prisoner" silently resists every attempt - no matter how painful or insidious - to make him confess his identity and his mission. After weeks in captivity, the Prisoner escapes, overcoming a room full of guards, torturers and interrogators. In the mountains of Albania, he makes contact with a group of people and completes his mission, before sinking to his knees and helplessly weeping. His erstwhile captor at the State Security Building is forced to conclude that the man he lost is Dimiter - the agent from hell.

 In Jerusalem, world-weary neurologist Dr. Mayo has to deal with the fanciful visions of his nurse, who claims to have seen phantoms and crippled patients walking. Police sergeant Peter Meral, still trying to piece his life together after the deaths of his wife and child, investigates a violent car crash that left no bodies at the scene. Then there's Wilson, the hippie from California who does part-time work at Mayo's hospital and Meral's residential complex. There's Father Mooney, quite proud of his garden. There are the CIA agents Sandalls and Bell, who trade in information and questions, but are stumped when bizarre events start occurring. And there's the body discovered in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, seemingly nobody, seemingly everybody. 

If the name "William Peter Blatty" sounds familiar, that's because he's the man who penned The Exorcist novels. But while The Exorcist's horror was visceral, Dimiter is far more cerebral in its approach. The "scariest" scenes (if you can call them "scary") are reserved for the unusually-long prologue, featuring the Interrogator doing everything he can think of to crack the Prisoner. Afterwards, Blatty's story is more mystery, whodunnit and espionage/psychological thriller, as a series of unexplained deaths strike the Hadassah Hospital. 

Dimiter's absence in the middle of the novel, and his gradual reintroduction towards the end, helps build the mystery surrounding this "agent from hell", while simultaneously revealing more about him. Blatty walks a very fine line in doing this, and while he occasionally strays on the side of gratuitous obfuscation, it adds up to a satisfying conclusion. Everything is explained at the end quite nicely in interview format between Meral, his superior, Mayo's nephew (also a police officer), Sandalls and Bell. It's ironic, because earlier in the novel, a character berates the plot device of fiction writers conveniently explaining their mysteries at the end of their books. So while I'd normally find fault with this neat-and-tidy way of tying up loose ends, Blatty gets points for being able to laugh at himself. And, honestly, there are enough plot twists and turns to warrant the use of such a device, easy-way-out as though it may be.

(contd.)