Kolymsky Heights

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 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 show more 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 is a 2015 re-publication of a solid thriller from the immediate post-Cold War period with a slightly breathless introduction by the children's fantasy writer Philip Pullman.

The novel is more than competent. Excellently written and (mostly) a 'page turner', it is has all the vices and virtues of the genre - implausibilities set within a carapace of gritty realism.

The implausibilities are manifold. The hero is capable of feats of toughness that really are 'in your dreams, mate' and we have exquisite planning by an intelligence agency that, in reality, could scarcely tie up its bootlaces when it came to operating inside Russia.

The hero's luck operates at an absurd level (especially as the Russians are drawn as competent and show more professional) and his sexual exploits are there to comfort the lonely man caught in yet another airport in yet another city going to yet another business meeting.

There is also a quasi-science fantasy element that won't fool anyone with any understanding of modern science, even those inclined to think that the Russians always have something up their sleeves.

But get all that nonsense out of the way and you have a very much above average effort. Davidson could actually write. The obligatory formulaic aspects of the genre are transformed into more plausibility than you usually get within these masculine fantasies.

Pullman rightly points out that Davidson manages the trope of mechanical detail brilliantly by embedding these moments deep into the plot rather than pausing the action to give us the excruciatingly dull particulars of some bit of military hardware.

Instead of one's eyes glazing over and feeling forced to skip the next few pages, Davidson educates and informs so that you cannot finish the book without having a much better understanding of the world in which it is set - the Canadian and Siberian frozen backlands.

The characterisation is also generally good within the conventions of the thriller with the exception of the hero who seems to be a sort of cut-out sentimental sociopath of enormous animal cunning but without much of an interior life as far as we are concerned.

But that is the point - these heroes are not written by Jane Austen. They appeal to the latent sociopath in every male wolf turned into corporate dog. The sentimentality keeps the reader from forgetting that actually he prefers life as a dog, all things considered.

But the essence of the book is its relentless energy, finally tuned so that it all hangs together as a set of necessary perilous quest journeys (much as Pullman notes).

The central journey on a tramp steamer from Japan to Siberia might well be a tribute to Eric Ambler and Jack London even if I still remain thoroughly puzzled as to why our hero should take quite such a tortuous route to get unnoticed into Russia.

The final scenes 'on the ice' (I will say no more because I don't do spoilers) are positively filmic, almost directions for the movie, and (assuming you are someone with reasonable visualisation skills) certainly exciting and tense. So, all round a highly recommended thriller if you like thrillers. show less

Kolymsky Heights is a marvelous adventure story, notable for the exotic setting of most of the story in the remotest, most secret parts of Siberia. Johnny Porter, a full-blooded Canadian Gitksan Indian, who is also a polymath and has a knack for picking up languages is tracked down and asked to respond to a message from a Russian scientist he met years before, who has requested that he come to the secret Siberian base where he is carrying out research, because apparently Porter is the only man who can understand—or perhaps the only one he trusts. But how does one get to a closed-off base in Siberia, where all the scientists working there know they will never be allowed to leave? That is where the pleasure of this story comes in. show more Davidson takes us through a detailed, well thought-out plan that first has Porter impersonating a Korean seaman, then…well, you should just read and find out. And if getting in is tough, getting out is even harder. There are great characters in this book who are either trying to catch Porter or are knowingly or unknowingly aiding him. What drives Porter, other than a sense of curiosity and determination to overcome any obstacle, is hard to define for much of the book, but by the end, perhaps we can understand his inner life a bit better. There is so much to love in this book. It isn’t often that scenes of someone driving through the snow and darkness can be so completely absorbing. The settings, whether various places in Siberia, the ship, or Japan are so real you can see them as you read. Philip Pullman, in his introduction (which you should read afterwards although there are no huge spoilers), calls this the best thriller he has ever read. He is definitely on to something. Few books present such a fascinating protagonist in such a well-drawn setting. I’ll be heading to the used book store tomorrow to find other books by Lionel Davidson. From their descriptions, they provide the same sort of in-depth pleasure this one does. show less

Exceptional offbeat minimalist thriller, with an unlikely hero -- a "Native Canadian" linguistic anthropologist! (Actually, I think the proper term is "First Nations".)

The book didn't quite suit my purposes at the time -- I was about to board a plane, so I wanted a relatively mindless airport novel -- but it generates its own peculiar level of excitement. It's closer in style to, say, George Smiley interviewing and re-interviewing retired Circus employees and shuffling through redacted reports -- in other words, a patient, incremental enumeration of observations and deductions and steps taken.

But it's not a procedural in the usual sense; the narrative is set on a few continents, and the last third of the novel is pretty much an extended show more chase sequence. It's a surprisingly complex plot nonetheless, full of carefully calibrated moments of subterfuge, and this complexity is all the more impressive considering the fact that the plot elements can be boiled down to only two phases: there's a top-secret base, and our hero has to get in, and he has to get out. Recommended. show less

Kolymsky Heights – A Masterpiece of a Thriller

Kolymsky Heights from the late Lionel Davidson has just been re-released by Faber & Faber with an introduction from Philip Pullman with the testimonial that it was “The best thriller I’ve ever read.” I thought that this was a very big statement and would I be let down by the boast, and to be honest I think he undersold it! As someone who has enjoyed reading classic adventure thrillers from the inter war period of the 20s and 30s it reminded me very much of that excellent but long forgotten genre. Kolymsky Heights is an adventure, with spy –espionage wrapped up in a thriller out in the frozen tundra of Siberia.

Once you have read Kolymsky Heights it is easy to see why Lionel Davidson show more won the Crime Writers Association’s Gold Dagger Award three times. How he managed to get the research about some of the most isolated places on earth that Russia does not allow foreigners unless they are sentenced there. The isolation of Siberia the darkness of winter, and the harshness of the place seeps through the pages the imagery the writing brings is absolutely fantastic.

The hero of Kolymsky Heights is Dr Johnny Porter who is a Gitxsan Indian, a Canadian professor of anthropology who has mastered the languages and dialects of the various tribes of Northern Canada, Alaska and Siberia, as well as Korean, Russian and Japanese. I struggle with English and my bar French and German! Johnny Porter is super intelligent and is required for a delicate mission that would require him to enter Siberia somehow get out on his own and at the same time gather some intelligence on a “Weather Station” and research station in the middle of a closed area that the Security Services protected. All this requested by a Russian scientist, Rogachev, who had met Johnny many years before at a conference at Oxford University. The CIA’s interest and training would eventually deliver Johnny in to Siberia but then he would be alone.

We see how he is trained as a Korean sailor on a Japanese tramp boat that will sail to the arctic north, the last ship through before it freezes over get off and somehow go to work in his Siberian adventure. How he is able to gain entry to Siberia how he survives and completes his mission is pure adventure while his potential escape is the thriller how he has to keep in front of the Russian Security Service. He knows they will hunt him down like a rabbit and they will not stop until they have him, he knows he is alone and must use his wits to survive.

Lionel Davidson produced an excellent book with Kolymsky Heights and it is unfortunate that we will never get a sequel but this is a pure pleasure to read. It is a page turner in the classic style and Davidson is a wonderful storyteller that can make you believe whatever he wrote on a page. show less

I’m not much of a classic thriller reader myself but I loved that icy photo on the cover. That was what drew me in! "Kolymsky Heights" really is a cracker. Page turning narrative, and the writing of place is superb; Davidson takes me to the Siberian wilderness every bit as much as any travel writer ever has. This is my first novel from him. I came across this first novel, from a friend of mine. Davidson has two deep traits: how sentences and how characters work. Both are deployed superbly in the Story: the syntax drew me into the very thought processes, what it is to be the fascinating characters he depicts. It’s old-fashioned in a good way, it’s full of drama and adventure, exotic locations, goodies and baddies, as every spy Book show more worth its salt should be. For most of the books I read, I always write lots of notes to allow me, later on, to breeze through the review. That’s close reading for you! This time round, I didn’t write a single line. And that is actually not a bad thing. This is a no-nonsense story. Davidson did not try “Literature”. As I said, Davidson wrote an old-fashioned thriller, but what a thriller. Basically, he is telling me a story by the fire. With a beginning, a middle and an end. And it's relentless. There is no time, no space or no will to force the narrative. Everything just flows. The style is as dry as they come, with the exceptions of a few cold jokes. Every word, every chapter, every paragraph’s sole purpose is to advance the plot, with a supreme kind of efficiency, ruthless like the main character. Once I started, it was impossible to put it down, in case I’d miss something. And the details are everything. Johnny Porter is nothing if not a very meticulous man (step aside James Bond). His journey starts with a preparation where, during months; on top pf that, he has to refresh is Russian and Korean, learn the way a merchant boat is set in order to prepare his "legend", memorize every tiny scrap of information found and prepared for him in order to successfully infiltrate the mysterious Soviet laboratory which might explain the unexpected failures of Chinese rockets... But of course, after any preparation, comes the moment when the man has to improvise. The plot is just plain crazy, bursting at the seams, but it works like a charm. Who would have thought I’d ever give 4 stars for a spy Fiction book of the thriller variety? Every aspiring writer should read it in order to see how to master storytelling and the subtle art of details which make any story believable. A brilliant work. show less

No book can live up to the hype Kolymsky Heights has suffered ("the best thriller ever") but this comes close. It's not particularly thrilling, until the final quarter--although then it makes up for it--but it's fascinating and absorbing throughout. In the detachment of its authorial viewpoint and the meticulous focus on practical problem-solving, it's reminiscent of Jack Vance and Patricia Highsmith. A very fine novel and congratulations to Faber to thinking to disinter it after over 20 years of neglect.