EVIL ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD A cycling trip that ended in terror

Review by Booklist Review

Lauren Geoghegan and Jay Austin were young D.C. professionals in the summer of 2017 when they set off for a bike ride around the world. A year later, they were biking on the Pamir Highway in Tajikistan, which runs through the "roof of the world" mountain system of Central Asia. This provides the otherworldly backdrop to the deaths of multiple cyclists not from the brutal elements but from a group of ISIS-backed radicals in a car, seeking the attention that would come from killing a young American couple. In Evil on the Roof of the World, author and cyclist Hazelgrove takes readers on Geoghegan and Austin's arduous journey, including the injuries, repairs, and nights searching for a place to sleep. He looks at why each would give up a well-paying job for an ascetic life on the road. Through interviews with friends and the cyclists' own trip writings, Hazelgrove presents a generous picture of a couple in search of something bigger than the everyday, who became victims of an ideological war. Fans of Jon Krakauer's classic Into the Wild (1996) will appreciate this story of searching humanity.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

---

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Novelist and historian Hazelgrove (Hemingway's Attic) recounts the fate of American cyclists Lauren Geoghegan and Jay Austin, who were slain by terrorists in Tajikistan in 2018, in this chilling true crime tale. Drawing from the couple's blog and interviews with their friends and family, Hazelgrove portrays Jay as a charismatic idealist who convinced Lauren to give up her job to follow him on a four-year bike trip around the globe, beginning in South Africa and ending in South America. In Africa, they faced charging elephants, flies, and malaria; in Europe, they dealt with suspicious officials and a few gnarly crashes. Still, they pushed forward for two years, winding up in Central Asia's Pamir Mountains (nicknamed the "Roof of the World"). In Tajikistan, a group of young men radicalized by ISIS stalked and ambushed the couple after encountering them on a highway; four were then killed by local police, while the ringleader died in an American prison. Hazelgrove's prose is utilitarian ("Jay and Lauren ride on into Botswana, which proves to be flat, arid, wild, and hot"), letting the facts of the case carry the narrative forward. For the most part, the approach pays off, lending the account an unsettling air. Readers will be aghast. Photos. (Nov.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

---