Kolymsky Heights by Lionel Davidson
Dec. 8th, 2016 12:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Kolymsky Heights.
A frozen Siberian hell lost in endless nights. The perfect location for an underground Russian research station.
A place so secret it doesn’t officially exist.
Once there, the scientists are forbidden to leave. But one scientist is desperate to get a message to the outside world.
So desperate, he sends a plea across the wilderness in order to summon –
The only man alive who can achieve the impossible.
When Professor Lazenby receives a coded message from a Russian scientist called Rogachev, it sends the British and US secret service into a tizzy. Rogachev has a secret – one that he’s only prepared to reveal to Johnny Porter, a Gitksan Indian from Canada with a gift for languages and a background in biology and anthropology. But there’s a snag. Rogachev is in a top secret research facility in a remote part of Siberia where security is so tight that no one can get in without Moscow authorisation and anyone sent there can only leave when they die. Somehow Porter must achieve the impossible and pull off a desperate plan that could fall apart at any moment …
Lionel Davidson’s spy thriller is a peculiar read – essentially a Cold War story published after the collapse of the USSR it’s hopelessly overwritten (every piece of research appears on the page), has a real old school taciturn hero (irresistible to women, of course) and an utterly preposterous revelation but which also builds an effective sense of tension that kept my attention until the end. What drew me to the novel was the novelty of having a hero who’s from the Canadian First Nations and I was interested in how Davidson makes use of that to keep the plot moving in a way that felt credible. Porter himself is a bit of a superman – cool under pressure, lusted after by women, and a multilingual polymath – as such he’s difficult to believe in as a person but is an old school hero for those who like their spies taciturn, resourceful and utterly ruthless (a scene where he contemplates murder is particularly chilling). I liked the equally cool, calm and collected Medical Officer Komarova who while being a love interest, has some agency of her own and is equally resourceful (notwithstanding a somewhat painful final exchange with Porter). Davidson clearly did a lot of research as the writing is incredibly detailed – at times this helps conjure a sense of reality (e.g. Russian slang on the base) but at times it gets in the way of the story (e.g. details about a Japanese ship). The big reveal is utterly ludicrous but Davidson nevertheless maintains a sense of tension and suspense that kept me turning the pages, especially in the final chapters. Ultimately while this book didn’t quite work for me I would check out Davidson’s back catalogue.
The Verdict:
Lionel Davidson’s spy thriller is a peculiar read – essentially a Cold War story published after the collapse of the USSR it’s hopelessly overwritten (every piece of research appears on the page), has a real old school taciturn hero (irresistible to women, of course) and an utterly preposterous revelation but which also builds an effective sense of tension that kept my attention until the end. What drew me to the novel was the novelty of having a hero who’s from the Canadian First Nations and I was interested in how Davidson makes use of that to keep the plot moving in a way that felt credible. Porter himself is a bit of a superman – cool under pressure, lusted after by women, and a multilingual polymath – as such he’s difficult to believe in as a person but is an old school hero for those who like their spies taciturn, resourceful and utterly ruthless (a scene where he contemplates murder is particularly chilling). I liked the equally cool, calm and collected Medical Officer Komarova who while being a love interest, has some agency of her own and is equally resourceful (notwithstanding a somewhat painful final exchange with Porter). Davidson clearly did a lot of research as the writing is incredibly detailed – at times this helps conjure a sense of reality (e.g. Russian slang on the base) but at times it gets in the way of the story (e.g. details about a Japanese ship). The big reveal is utterly ludicrous but Davidson nevertheless maintains a sense of tension and suspense that kept me turning the pages, especially in the final chapters. Ultimately while this book didn’t quite work for me I would check out Davidson’s back catalogue.
A frozen Siberian hell lost in endless nights. The perfect location for an underground Russian research station.
Once there, the scientists are forbidden to leave. But one scientist is desperate to get a message to the outside world.
So desperate, he sends a plea across the wilderness in order to summon –
When Professor Lazenby receives a coded message from a Russian scientist called Rogachev, it sends the British and US secret service into a tizzy. Rogachev has a secret – one that he’s only prepared to reveal to Johnny Porter, a Gitksan Indian from Canada with a gift for languages and a background in biology and anthropology. But there’s a snag. Rogachev is in a top secret research facility in a remote part of Siberia where security is so tight that no one can get in without Moscow authorisation and anyone sent there can only leave when they die. Somehow Porter must achieve the impossible and pull off a desperate plan that could fall apart at any moment …
Lionel Davidson’s spy thriller is a peculiar read – essentially a Cold War story published after the collapse of the USSR it’s hopelessly overwritten (every piece of research appears on the page), has a real old school taciturn hero (irresistible to women, of course) and an utterly preposterous revelation but which also builds an effective sense of tension that kept my attention until the end. What drew me to the novel was the novelty of having a hero who’s from the Canadian First Nations and I was interested in how Davidson makes use of that to keep the plot moving in a way that felt credible. Porter himself is a bit of a superman – cool under pressure, lusted after by women, and a multilingual polymath – as such he’s difficult to believe in as a person but is an old school hero for those who like their spies taciturn, resourceful and utterly ruthless (a scene where he contemplates murder is particularly chilling). I liked the equally cool, calm and collected Medical Officer Komarova who while being a love interest, has some agency of her own and is equally resourceful (notwithstanding a somewhat painful final exchange with Porter). Davidson clearly did a lot of research as the writing is incredibly detailed – at times this helps conjure a sense of reality (e.g. Russian slang on the base) but at times it gets in the way of the story (e.g. details about a Japanese ship). The big reveal is utterly ludicrous but Davidson nevertheless maintains a sense of tension and suspense that kept me turning the pages, especially in the final chapters. Ultimately while this book didn’t quite work for me I would check out Davidson’s back catalogue.
The Verdict:
Lionel Davidson’s spy thriller is a peculiar read – essentially a Cold War story published after the collapse of the USSR it’s hopelessly overwritten (every piece of research appears on the page), has a real old school taciturn hero (irresistible to women, of course) and an utterly preposterous revelation but which also builds an effective sense of tension that kept my attention until the end. What drew me to the novel was the novelty of having a hero who’s from the Canadian First Nations and I was interested in how Davidson makes use of that to keep the plot moving in a way that felt credible. Porter himself is a bit of a superman – cool under pressure, lusted after by women, and a multilingual polymath – as such he’s difficult to believe in as a person but is an old school hero for those who like their spies taciturn, resourceful and utterly ruthless (a scene where he contemplates murder is particularly chilling). I liked the equally cool, calm and collected Medical Officer Komarova who while being a love interest, has some agency of her own and is equally resourceful (notwithstanding a somewhat painful final exchange with Porter). Davidson clearly did a lot of research as the writing is incredibly detailed – at times this helps conjure a sense of reality (e.g. Russian slang on the base) but at times it gets in the way of the story (e.g. details about a Japanese ship). The big reveal is utterly ludicrous but Davidson nevertheless maintains a sense of tension and suspense that kept me turning the pages, especially in the final chapters. Ultimately while this book didn’t quite work for me I would check out Davidson’s back catalogue.
