Kolymsky Heights

Product Information

Davidson dropped out of sight and popular reckoning - though I had the pleasure of creating his entry in Wikipedia before he died.

A book for the beach: Kolymsky Heights by Lionel Davidson

It's a great ride; and as much an affectionate portrait of a little-seen part of the world as anything else. It takes considerable effort to entice the spy, who is actually a strange multi-ethnic aboriginal Canadian, to participate (you'll appreciate 'why' after reading later what he goes through). Porter must negotiate checkpoints along Siberian highways, ditch the bobik when it’s of no further use and strike out across the ice of . Kolymsky Heights is an adventure, with spy –espionage wrapped up in a thriller out in the frozen tundra of Siberia.

Good-humoured, unpretentious and a bit eccentric, it's more like having a well-read friend than a subscription to a literary review. It started off well enough, the prologue while written in laborious detail set up something that sounded very interesting but then the story I was expecting to read never happened! because the end was decent, but unfortunately by then I didn’t care much anymore, I just wanted to be done. Porter escapes, first in the bobik, then by stealing a plane ticket, a snow-plough, and finally on skis. I la revelació que hi ha allà, una espècie d'illa del doctor Moreau moderna, és totalment decebedora.

Kolymsky Heights - Lionel Davidson - Google Books

He enrolls as a Korean deckhand on a ship in Japan, crosses Siberia as a truck driver--in which capacity he meets beautiful Dr.The novel begins with a Prologue which appears to be a letter written by an unnamed Russian scientist to an old acquaintance. He can alter his personality according to the moment or event and there are few places in the book where the writing becomes slow or boring as Davidson describes events so well as the topics and happenings and location have never been visited in any other novel I have ever read. If there is no contact with the outside world then how is it that he is able to tell his story, Kolymsky Heights is the much bigger story of how this feat was achieved.

Kolymsky Heights - Five Books Expert Reviews Kolymsky Heights - Five Books Expert Reviews

This third man is Johnny Porter, a Gitksan Indian from British Columbia, a freakishly gifted linguist with degrees in biology and anthropology, who has also studied native languages in Siberia. The full version of this article is only available to subscribers to Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly. 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.The wild adventures of Kolya Khodyan in remotest Siberia, a chase through the Arctic wastes like none other. plus Philip Pullman says it is one of the best books he has ever read, and I love Philip Pullman's books. The Russian security services become aware that "Khodyan" is not who he says he is, and begin to pursue him. It was an immediate success and set a benchmark for his particular forte of fast-moving adventure stories set in exotic places.

Kolymsky Heights - Waterstones Exclusive Edition by Lionel

The sheer depth of technical detail included in the story is challenging at times, but Porter’s meticulous preparation for his mission and the extent of his subterfuge are very reminiscent of those employed by that other great fictional deceiver, Frederick Forsyth’s Jackal. 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. 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. However, a few years ago Philip Pullman selected Davidson’s 1994 novel Kolymsky Heights for his Waterstone’s author table.It tells the story of an Oxford Professor, who receives an envelope containing nothing but two cigarette papers, which begins a chain of events that will change the course of history. Well, I saw 'Kolymsky Heights' on a list of the best 25 thrillers of the past few years, read a couple blurbs by other authors about it (Charles Cumming, what have you done?