Kolymsky Heights

Product Information

I've never read a thriller that so successfully transported me to a hitherto unimagined place. (Maxton Walker Guardian) Ok, hold up-it really does pain me to write this review. I don’t like to trash any author on GR or anywhere else. I am not a writer myself; I have tried and spinning a good yarn is no easy task. Like I said, I was excited for this book, and after the prologue, I was even more excited. So what happened?

Kolymsky Heights - Wikipedia

Recluten un paio que viu a les muntanyes i que en sap un niu d'imitar idiomes i dialectes i l'envien a la conxinxina a espiar la base russa. The synopsis itself is fairly simple, a single man must enter a heavily restricted part Russia, then enter an even more heavily restricted research facility, extract the required information and return safely to the west. It’s a classic quest story and Kolymsky Heights has been compared to John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps, I personally think it’s closer to Greenmantle, the second of Buchan’s Richard Hannay novels than it is to The Thirty-Nine Steps. Instead of Richard Hannay as the civilian thrown into the deep end, in Kolymsky Heights we have Johnny Porter, a native Canadian Indian who has a gift for learning indigenous languages. He’s also not unexpectedly very resourceful and in a step too far he’s a bit like James Bond when it comes to seducing women. I've never read a thriller that so successfully transported me to a hitherto unimagined place. After a few racy globe-trotting chapters in which Porter is painstakingly inserted into his undercover role, we enter the dark, icy world of the Siberian winter. And it never gives up its grip until the end.

Plot: What's the story about?

His 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 a 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. [3]

A book for the beach: Kolymsky Heights by Lionel Davidson

The love interest (Russian Medical Officer Komarova) is a bit yawn and contrived. Character-wise, a 15 year-old called Ludmilla provides, for me, the most poignant moment in the tale. I’ve never come across a character quite like her in anything else I’ve ever read.The novel describes an improbable romp through north-east Siberia, by way of rarefied Oxford University, remote British Columbia, and Tokyo. Our hero is super-linguist and multiculturalist Johnny Porter (aka Raven aka Jean-Baptiste Porteur), a native of the Canadian Gitxsan tribe. He is also a dab hand at impersonations and can fabricate a jeep (fabulously called a Bobik - I SO want one!) out of spare parts in a freezing Siberian ice cave. On his own in three days. Welcome to the second in my series of favourite books which I’ll be reviewing over the summer. Lionel Davidson’s Kolymsky Heightsis one those books which I, although I hestitate to say it, would put in the ‘best you’ve never heard of’ category. I know that’s a cliché but it’s how it was described to me when I was first given it to read in 2008, the person who gave it me probably had the same conversation with the person who gave it to them and so forth. After reading Kolymsky Heights the first time I didn’t disagree