Lionel Davidson (1922–2009)
Author of Kolymsky Heights
About the Author
Lionel Davidson was born in Hull, Yorkshire on March 31, 1922. He left school early and worked as office boy at the Spectator magazine, which published his first short story when he was 15. At 17, he was writing syndicated features for the Morley Adams Group. During World War II, he served as a show more telegraphist with the Royal Navy's submarine service in the Pacific. After the war, he joined the Keystone Press Agency as a freelance reporter. His first novel, The Night of Wenceslas, was published in 1960 and won the Crime Writers' Association's Gold Dagger Award and the Author's Club First Novel Award. It was adapted into a film entitled Hot Enough for June starring Dirk Bogarde in 1964. His other works include The Rose of Tibet and Kolymsky Heights. He also won the CWA's Gold Dagger Award for A Long Way to Shiloh in 1966 and The Chelsea Murders in 1978. In 2001, he was awarded the CWA's Cartier Diamond Dagger lifetime achievement award. He also wrote children's books under the pen name David Line. He died on October 21, 2009 at the age of 87. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Disambiguation Notice:
Lionel Davidson also published children's novels under the pseudonym David Line.
Works by Lionel Davidson
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Other names
- Line, David (pseudonym)
- Birthdate
- 1922-03-31
- Date of death
- 2009-10-21
- Gender
- male
- Occupations
- reporter
submariner(WW2)
novelist
spy novelist
short story writer
screenwriter - Organizations
- Royal Navy (WWII)
- Awards and honors
- Cartier Diamond Dagger(2001)
Gold Dagger Award(1960 ∙ 1966 ∙ 1978) - Short biography
- Lionel Davidson was born in Yorkshire, one of nine children of an immigrant Jewish tailor. The family moved to Streatham in south London when he was a small child. He left school at age 14 and worked for The Spectator magazine as an office boy. He managed to get one of his first stories published in the magazine under a pseudonym. Later he became a reporter for the Keystone Press Agency. During World War II, he served in the Far East with the Submarine Service of the Royal Navy. At the end of the war, he returned to the Keystone Agency and became fiction editor of John Bull magazine in 1955 before traveling around Europe as a freelance reporter. It was during one of these trips that he got the idea for his first thriller, The Night of Wenceslas, published in 1960. The novel was an instant bestseller and immediately pushed Davidson into the front ranks of the thriller genre. The book won the Crime Writers' Association's Gold Dagger Award (the top prize for crime and spy fiction in Britain) as well as the Authors' Club First Novel Award. It was adapted as a film in 1964 called Hot Enough for June. Davidson's second novel, The Rose of Tibet (1962) was equally well received. A Long Way to Shiloh (1966) won Davidson his second Gold Dagger, and he achieved an unprecedented third with The Chelsea Murders (1978). The Chelsea Murders was also adapted for television as part of Thames TV's Armchair Thriller series in 1981. Davidson moved with his family to Israel in 1968. Three of his novels are set in that country. He also wrote film scripts, short stories, and children's fiction such as Under Plum Lake (1980), as well as several others written under the pen name David Line. He did not produce another thriller until Kolymsky Heights (1994), which won international acclaim and introduced its author to a new generation of readers. In 2001, he received the CWA's Cartier Diamond Dagger award for lifetime achievement and "a significant contribution to crime fiction published in the English language."
- Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- Hull, Yorkshire, England, UK
- Places of residence
- London, England, UK
- Place of death
- London, England, UK
- Disambiguation notice
- Lionel Davidson also published children's novels under the pseudonym David Line.
- Associated Place (for map)
- England, UK
Members
Reviews
I feel very privileged to have enjoyed every moment of this thunderous read. I was sad to learn of author Lionel Davidson's passing, but I hope the publishers of this work of art are contemplating another means of bringing our hero, Johnny Porter, to life in print or on screen. This would make a blistering movie!
Davidson's tempo works well for a complex plot and likable characters, both in intimate moments and - especially - during the heart-thumping final ride. The author's capacity to so show more vividly contrive sub-Arctic north-east Siberia is truly remarkable and comes alive on every page.
Johnny Porter is a brilliantly conceived character, truly "the one man alive who can achieve the impossible". The author takes his time revealing the breadth and depths of the Porter character, and within the first descriptions of him, you're going to be hooked.
There's a sci-fi undercurrent to the plot, with bad Russians, crass Americans and hard-bitten East Asian characters leading us from sleepy Oxford to the frozen Kolyma. At each separate scene along the way, unpredictable twists and turns challenge you as if to say, 'I dare you to put this book down'. The best thriller I've enjoyed in years and years.
I'm not normally one for long introductions, but Philip Pullman's piece certainly whetted my appetite for the main attraction. He deserves credit for setting the stage revealing nothing of the plot. show less
Davidson's tempo works well for a complex plot and likable characters, both in intimate moments and - especially - during the heart-thumping final ride. The author's capacity to so show more vividly contrive sub-Arctic north-east Siberia is truly remarkable and comes alive on every page.
Johnny Porter is a brilliantly conceived character, truly "the one man alive who can achieve the impossible". The author takes his time revealing the breadth and depths of the Porter character, and within the first descriptions of him, you're going to be hooked.
There's a sci-fi undercurrent to the plot, with bad Russians, crass Americans and hard-bitten East Asian characters leading us from sleepy Oxford to the frozen Kolyma. At each separate scene along the way, unpredictable twists and turns challenge you as if to say, 'I dare you to put this book down'. The best thriller I've enjoyed in years and years.
I'm not normally one for long introductions, but Philip Pullman's piece certainly whetted my appetite for the main attraction. He deserves credit for setting the stage revealing nothing of the plot. show less
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
One of the symptoms of madness is the repeated performance of the same action with an expectation of a different outcome. I am, therefore, slightly worried about my own sanity. A few months ago, having been sold the dummy by fervent encomia from a number of writers whose works I have enjoyed, I succumbed to the grievous error of buying Lionel Davidson's Kolymsky Heights, which proved to be one of the most fatuous and irritating novels I had read in a long time.
I had promised myself that I show more would not make that mistake again, so, when I saw Davidson's The Rose of Tibet being lauded by Anthony Horowitz I should have known better. I had, however, just read two books by Horowitz that I had greatly enjoyed, so I foolishly succumbed and decided that the Kolymsky Heights debacle might have been an unrepresentative blot on Davidson's literary escutcheon.
Sadly not. I estimate that I have read about five thousand books so far, and I am struggling to recall one that was more irritating, fatuous and worthless than this one. I can't definitively say that I haven't read a worse book, but if I have, then some protective streak in my consciousness has erased it from my memory. show less
I had promised myself that I show more would not make that mistake again, so, when I saw Davidson's The Rose of Tibet being lauded by Anthony Horowitz I should have known better. I had, however, just read two books by Horowitz that I had greatly enjoyed, so I foolishly succumbed and decided that the Kolymsky Heights debacle might have been an unrepresentative blot on Davidson's literary escutcheon.
Sadly not. I estimate that I have read about five thousand books so far, and I am struggling to recall one that was more irritating, fatuous and worthless than this one. I can't definitively say that I haven't read a worse book, but if I have, then some protective streak in my consciousness has erased it from my memory. show less
Part of the fun of mystery novels is trying to work out puzzles, and I quite enjoyed chewing over a puzzle presented by this one: why do I dislike this so much?
There was an obvious answer: the protagonist and his portrayal. Our narrator, Casper Laing, is a loathsome sex pest, an irresponsible drunk, and a heedless narcissist. Now, you can’t write a character quite so flawed without noticing that you’re doing so, but Davidson apparently thinks that his creation is, overall, a good egg. At show more the crucial moments, Laing dashingly displays all the heroic virtues, and earns absolution for all his vices, none of which turn out to be too consequential anyway. The object of his affections (most often referred to as “the girl”) turns out to consider relentless badgering the very best of foreplay; his drinking results in nothing much more than chucklesome antics; and the headlong charges after his own interests deliver outrageous success more often than not. There is much to dislike here, but after some thought I concluded that this was a red herring. Too obvious. The answer had to be deeper.
Was it, perhaps, the plot? The plot is unarguably preposterous, a caper across the plains and deserts of Israel in search of McGuffins. Laing is a brilliant young professor of archaeology, or philology, or some such thing involving very old Middle Eastern languages (don’t worry, though—we’re assured early on that he’s the sexy “intuitive” kind of brainy, not the frumpy thinking-hard-about-stuff kind). He’s hired by people vaguely connected with the Israeli establishment, at first to find and interpret an ancient scroll, and subsequently to find and recover the treasure whose location the scroll reveals, all before the Bad Guys get there first. Escapades and shenanigans ensue: scrapes, escapes, fights, heights, chases, even a courtroom scene. It’s all deeply, deeply silly, a succession of set pieces tenuously connected. But dislikeable? Surely not. Who doesn’t like a silly pseudo-archaeological adventure, done well? (it’s easy to believe that George Lucas absorbed quite a lot from this book that later shaped Indiana Jones)
But wait: that’s it. Done well! Or, in this case, not. Here’s the thing: to successfully pull off this kind of caper, you need to dissuade the audience from thinking too closely about what’s going on. The writing needs to be fluent, pacey, and smooth: it needs to speed the reader along, not trip them up. And for far too much of this book, the reader is stumbling around. Furthermore, this is due to clearly deliberate style choices. It’s as if Davidson has taken far too much heed of two bits of common writing advice. First: “show, don’t tell”. Yes, fine, avoid clunky exposition, but not at the cost of leaving your descriptions so vague and oblique that the reader frequently has to pause to work out what the hell is actually being described. Second: “avoid cliché like the plague”. Again, fine, but if the alternative is convoluted syntax, dangling pronouns, pile-ups of adverbs and modifiers, and the occasional gobstopping thesaurus word (“inpissated”, anyone?) . . . well, you might be better off just laying out some boilerplate now and again. The whole thing reminded me somewhat obscurely of Beckett, and that would be a compliment if the work were one where a tricksy style ought to be to the focus, but in this case it’s definitely not a compliment.
I’ve analysed all this as if the problem is that Davidson is trying to be A Writer, rather than just writing. The other slightly worrying possibility is that he thinks he has faithfully recreated how brainy people actually speak and think. Whatever the cause, it’s all a bit of a shame, because when he forgets being A Writer and just writes, he can put a tense, gripping scene on the page, and he can manage evocative description of locale. I can see why a lot of people like this. But I didn’t much. show less
There was an obvious answer: the protagonist and his portrayal. Our narrator, Casper Laing, is a loathsome sex pest, an irresponsible drunk, and a heedless narcissist. Now, you can’t write a character quite so flawed without noticing that you’re doing so, but Davidson apparently thinks that his creation is, overall, a good egg. At show more the crucial moments, Laing dashingly displays all the heroic virtues, and earns absolution for all his vices, none of which turn out to be too consequential anyway. The object of his affections (most often referred to as “the girl”) turns out to consider relentless badgering the very best of foreplay; his drinking results in nothing much more than chucklesome antics; and the headlong charges after his own interests deliver outrageous success more often than not. There is much to dislike here, but after some thought I concluded that this was a red herring. Too obvious. The answer had to be deeper.
Was it, perhaps, the plot? The plot is unarguably preposterous, a caper across the plains and deserts of Israel in search of McGuffins. Laing is a brilliant young professor of archaeology, or philology, or some such thing involving very old Middle Eastern languages (don’t worry, though—we’re assured early on that he’s the sexy “intuitive” kind of brainy, not the frumpy thinking-hard-about-stuff kind). He’s hired by people vaguely connected with the Israeli establishment, at first to find and interpret an ancient scroll, and subsequently to find and recover the treasure whose location the scroll reveals, all before the Bad Guys get there first. Escapades and shenanigans ensue: scrapes, escapes, fights, heights, chases, even a courtroom scene. It’s all deeply, deeply silly, a succession of set pieces tenuously connected. But dislikeable? Surely not. Who doesn’t like a silly pseudo-archaeological adventure, done well? (it’s easy to believe that George Lucas absorbed quite a lot from this book that later shaped Indiana Jones)
But wait: that’s it. Done well! Or, in this case, not. Here’s the thing: to successfully pull off this kind of caper, you need to dissuade the audience from thinking too closely about what’s going on. The writing needs to be fluent, pacey, and smooth: it needs to speed the reader along, not trip them up. And for far too much of this book, the reader is stumbling around. Furthermore, this is due to clearly deliberate style choices. It’s as if Davidson has taken far too much heed of two bits of common writing advice. First: “show, don’t tell”. Yes, fine, avoid clunky exposition, but not at the cost of leaving your descriptions so vague and oblique that the reader frequently has to pause to work out what the hell is actually being described. Second: “avoid cliché like the plague”. Again, fine, but if the alternative is convoluted syntax, dangling pronouns, pile-ups of adverbs and modifiers, and the occasional gobstopping thesaurus word (“inpissated”, anyone?) . . . well, you might be better off just laying out some boilerplate now and again. The whole thing reminded me somewhat obscurely of Beckett, and that would be a compliment if the work were one where a tricksy style ought to be to the focus, but in this case it’s definitely not a compliment.
I’ve analysed all this as if the problem is that Davidson is trying to be A Writer, rather than just writing. The other slightly worrying possibility is that he thinks he has faithfully recreated how brainy people actually speak and think. Whatever the cause, it’s all a bit of a shame, because when he forgets being A Writer and just writes, he can put a tense, gripping scene on the page, and he can manage evocative description of locale. I can see why a lot of people like this. But I didn’t much. show less
This is my third time reading The Chelsea Murders, and this time I actually remembered which of them was the killer about halfway through. I don't think there's a murder mystery out there that I've ever enjoyed quite as much, certainly not of the classic English variety which this both is and sends up.
We are, as it were, led by the nose through a series of murders terrorising London's bohemian Chelsea area. The killer, who enjoys sending cryptic literary notes to warn of his coming exploits, show more is one of three students making a film. The police are all over them and the press are sniffing round like bloodhounds and everyone's trying to work it out, but the killer always seems one step ahead.
By all accounts this is packed to the rafters with London arty/publishing/whatever in-jokes of which I can fairly confidently say I got bugger all. That doesn't matter. It's clever, sharp, witty, full of characters that are mostly unlikeable but who are all doing interesting things and the whodunnit aspect is utterly, deliciously maddening in a way that most whodunnits just aren't.
Davidson didn't write another one like this. Like DCS Warton he'd had enough of the murder game, which was almost a pity. Luckily he wrote some other great stuff instead, and we can always go to Chelsea. show less
We are, as it were, led by the nose through a series of murders terrorising London's bohemian Chelsea area. The killer, who enjoys sending cryptic literary notes to warn of his coming exploits, show more is one of three students making a film. The police are all over them and the press are sniffing round like bloodhounds and everyone's trying to work it out, but the killer always seems one step ahead.
By all accounts this is packed to the rafters with London arty/publishing/whatever in-jokes of which I can fairly confidently say I got bugger all. That doesn't matter. It's clever, sharp, witty, full of characters that are mostly unlikeable but who are all doing interesting things and the whodunnit aspect is utterly, deliciously maddening in a way that most whodunnits just aren't.
Davidson didn't write another one like this. Like DCS Warton he'd had enough of the murder game, which was almost a pity. Luckily he wrote some other great stuff instead, and we can always go to Chelsea. show less
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