Kolymsky Heights

by Lionel Davidson

Brilliant and cynical Johnny Porter ventures into a remote and frozen former gulag in Northern Siberia and finds an explosive Russian secret.

Genres: Thriller, Fiction, Russia, Espionage, Mystery, Adventure, Book Club

361 pages, Hardcover

First published August 15, 1994

About the author

Aka David Line

Lionel Davidson was a three-times winner of the Gold Dagger Award (for The Night of Wenceslas, A Long Way to Shilo and The Chelsea Murders). His thrillers and adventure novels have won him enormous international acclaim. He also wrote children's books under the name of David Line.

See also Obituary at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obitu...
[this reference added 12-Aug-2013].

Reviews

[Luffy Sempai · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never reached the last page of a book, then started reading it again from page one without missing a beat. But I came close with this book. A newspaper describes this as the best thriller of these past 25 years.

I think that what books like I Am Pilgrim fails to do, this book accomplishes and ticks every box. There is a lot of work that has gone into the book. And a lot of thought too. Kolymsky Heights is vivid and original.

Thousands of years ago, the people from Siberia migrated through what is now the Bering Strait, came to North America and came to be called Indians. However Canadian Indians are different, since they retained their original features. The Bering Strait is the key to the story. Due to the ease of ebooks, you don't need to beg, borrow, or steal it. I heartily recommend Kolymsky Heights.

[The Cats’ Mother · Rating 2 out of 5]

Weird, annoying and overly long, this is not "the best thriller ever" as claimed by Philip Pullman in the intro. Written in 1994, it was re-released last year, and having heard about it from a normally reliable friend, I bought it then, but took a while to get to it, then took an even longer while to finish it. I've plodded on through chapter after chapter of excruciating detail about Johnny's journey to deepest darkest Siberia, waiting for the payoff that didn't come. It all felt completely pointless: mysterious goings on in a research base involving a prehistoric corpse, so the CIA go to all the trouble of tracking down the One Man who can get in there, and sending him off, then pretty much abandoning him to his fate. Meanwhile Johnny, with no personal stake in the mission, gamely risks both his and a lot of innocent Russians, to bring back something of ultimately minor interest. There are some entertaining minor characters and I feel I now know enough about Siberia to not want to go there, but really this was a waste of precious reading time.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 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.

[James Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you watch a Bond film thinking: well yes, all this excitement and adventure is all very well, but how does Bond book his plane tickets, and how many stops does he have along the way?
THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU!

There's a mad Russian scientist doing mad Sci-fi things in a top secret Russian military base in Russia and our hero has to go and infiltrate that base for REASONS. But the actual infiltration takes up about 30 pages of a 500 page novel. The rest is about getting him to the base, and boy do we read about that in minute detail, and a bit of getting him out. Weird storytelling decision that, but I assume it's deliberate.

Anyway, it's interesting but pretty far from thrilling.

[Corey Woodcock · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had been looking forward to this book for a few months now, and was excited when I finally got to it. I was expecting a rollicking adventure, on the high seas, across a barren and formidable arctic landscape, with espionage and intrigue, and all that yadda yadda... What I got was Guaranteed Value Tom Clancy with some Robert Ludlum and a speck of Michael Crichton thrown in there. I was mildly entertained at the best of times, and frustratingly confused and eventually bored at the worst of times.

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?

Well, I don’t really know, but I do know that reading this novel was a frustrating experience. After a decent enough setup-not earth shattering, but serviceable-the next nearly 200 pages contained nothing of the “plot” as originally promised. I’m ok with pure adventure-“the journey, not the destination” and all that, but I felt this was incredibly mishandled. Nearly half of this novel has nothing to do with the supposed plot, and we get to travel with the main character through the minutiae of daily life on an espionage mission. There’s no doubt this may intrigue some people, and in some cases, I wouldn’t mind it either. But it was fumbled in the 1st quarter. And the second quarter. I know a lot of crap is heaved at someone like Tom Clancy, but I will defend him every time and say that despite a misfire or two, he is able to tell a long, highly, highly detailed and complex story extremely competently, and never loses my attention. Reading this book reminded me of that, and instantly upped my respect for Clancy and Ludlum, who do this so well. Davidson was going for this, or a version of this, and the arrow not only missed the mark, but completely missed the entire target, and somehow hit the guy standing next to him.

I know that this book has an almost cult-like following of fans that hail it as a masterpiece, and by all means, I could be missing the point completely here. But, I just don’t get it...there are many similar books out there that I have found far more entertaining. The prose is flat and lifeless. It seemed like every time I would begin to become interested or invested in a plot thread, almost like clockwork the chapter would end and we would then be introduced to new characters that had seemingly nothing to do with what was going on. Then they would start having confusing and, at times bordering on nonsensical, conversations. Example-lets say there was just a chapter that had been somewhat interesting, with the main character, Johnny Porter (who also goes by multiple names throughout the book), doing any given thing, and then the chapter ends. The next chapter will pick up with two characters having a new conversation, yet no names are given the whole time. Just “he said,” and “she said”, etc. This was extremely frustrating and did not benefit an already convoluted narrative one bit.

I don’t mind a little suspension of disbelief, but some of the little things that require the plot to work here are simply ridiculous. I’m supposed to believe that virtually overnight, at a spy camp, Porter was transformed into a super spy the likes of which the world has never seen? Not to mention the guy is such a masterful linguist that he knows how to speak every and any language you can possibly come up with, including (but not limited to) Japanese, English, Korean, Russian, French, and MULTIPLE Native languages from all around Canada to Northern Japan and numerous Siberian minority languages that are completely different and unintelligible with each other. He also speaks many of these languages so fluently that none of the locals have any idea he’s foreign. Also, our super spy builds a truck from scratch, by himself in a frozen Siberian cave. C’monnnn. There are so many more eye-rolling examples of this, but this review has already gone on too long.

This has been the biggest literary disappointment I’ve had in a while, because I was genuinely expecting to like this. This is my first book by Davidson; I always try to give an author a second chance if I don’t enjoy a book of theirs, and since I already (perhaps stupidly) grabbed Rose of Tibet when I bought this, I will be reading that at some point to see if Davidson can somewhat redeem himself for me. Not that he would care, and if you enjoyed this book, neither should you.

Final thoughts: For almost the entirety of reading this book, it feels like you are missing some vital piece of the jigsaw puzzle, and it makes for an almost constant state of being confused. I read this feeling like I was missing key pieces of information throughout the whole book-like who was doing what, and why they were doing it. This was not done well, and that is the problem. I have no issue with non-linear or deliberately plotted narratives-I love Peter Straub, Dan Simmons, and even more heavy duty stuff like William Faulkner-but those guys are brilliant and know what they’re doing, why they’re doing it and where they’re going. Cant say the same about Lionel Davidson unfortunately. I can’t say avoid it at all costs, because clearly some people love this book and see things in it that I don’t, but I cannot recommend it either. 2/5 because the end was decent, but unfortunately by then I didn’t care much anymore, I just wanted to be done. If Davidson stuck with what he did at the end this could’ve been a decent book but alas, it was not to be.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are the type of person who while watching some blockbuster thriller thinks to themselves I am enjoying this hand to hand combat between the hero and the evil henchman on top of a gondola in the alps but I wonder how he got there in the first place, did he buy a return ticket? Did he ask for the ticket in English or did he ask for it in the local language, maybe he rented a car, I wonder if he put in on a credit card, than this is so the book for you.

Finally at long last a thriller which reflects the presumably rather mundane life of secret agents as they travel to all manner of far away locations with a meticulous logging of all the steps this takes. This does make the book rather plodding in parts but it's a mesmerizing plod, a plod which one rather enjoys and it unfolds with stately grace seldom encountered in a thriller.

There some minor distractions in the form of Russian scientists, an amorous health officer, secret science breakthroughs, enigmatic heroes and a stirring chase at the end. Mostly though it's a very pleasant zen of travel. Perfect I would imagine for the trans Siberian railway.

[Gerald Sinstadt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was Lionel Davidson's last book (he died in 2009). His son has recorded elsewhere the problems of its creation - it was rewritten three times.

Having been an admirer of this author since the days of The Night of Wenceslas and Smith's Gazelle and others, it was a great joy to discover one last volume that had eluded my notice. I was not disappointed. At the centre of the adventure is a premise which takes some swallowing - though total disbelief was suspended while reading. But essentially this is a brilliantly plotted story of two desperately hazardous journeys, into and out of Siberia. The characters are far from being stereotypes but remain identifiable.

Davidson devotees will not need telling that the quality of the writing makes the feeling of the end of the line grievously sad. One can only envy newcomers who find Kolymsky Heights as a cue to explore the fine earlier works.

[Zuberino · Rating 5 out of 5]

* spoilers*

With this book, too, I have long history. There was a huge - and I mean absolutely humongous - uproar in the British press when this thriller first came out in the mid-90s. In a friend’s father’s bookshelf in Dhanmondi, I had found Davidson’s first novel - The Night of Wenceslas, published back in the 60s and immediately announcing the arrival of a brilliant new talent in the genre. A couple of years on, I got my mittens on a paperback copy of Kolymsky Heights from Nilkhet - and proceeded to smash through the book in no time, I still recall hiding out on that bed in the balcony in Nakhalpara, door bolt securely in place, and spending a whole day zooming through the last 180-odd pages of the book. The wild adventures of Kolya Khodyan in remotest Siberia, a chase through the Arctic wastes like none other.

Davidson dropped out of sight and popular reckoning - though I had the pleasure of creating his entry in Wikipedia before he died. Imagine my surprise then, when a few years ago KH was reprinted with a great deal of PR noise and ceremony, gracing the windows of big bookshops all around central London. Rarely is a rediscovery so well-merited. I’d been meaning to reread KH ever since - and although I admit that I no longer have that same stamina of youth (and although the central scientific puzzle out of Tcherny Vodi holds up less well after 25 years) it is the magnificence of the plot on either side of the secret station that still makes this book such a pleasure.

The buildup to the Kolyma basin, the preparation, the subterfuge, the traveling across vast distances, the chameleon Khodyan inveigling himself into the society of the far north - and then once his job is done, the chase. The chase, the chase, the chase in the bobik! That chase - sustained all the way from Kolyma to the Bering Strait and ACROSS the fucking Bering Strait, in all its marvellous invention and ingenuity - I doubt there are very many action sequences of its length and quality anywhere in the genre. Glad then that I came back to Kolya Khodyan and Tcherny Vodi after so long. As Philip Pullman says in the intro, “This is the best there is.” He's not far off.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems unfair to begin a review with negative points but that's what seems to stick in the mind, despite my giving it 4 stars and enjoying the hell out of it. Utter nonsense, incredibly unlikely, dead-pan to the point of characterlessness, overlong, no valid motivations to speak of, writing that regularly repeats itself to no effect... Should I go on? The main character, seen from a distance at first, could be promising -his first response to a CIA contact is 'fuck off spook'- yet he then goes on to risk life and limb for them.

No, it is unfair. Once you get used to the unusual structure -build-up with what turn out to be almost irrelevant characters, long, drawn-out disguise sequences, highly technical worries, short underwhelming 'climax' followed by breath-taking action chase sequence- it is enormous fun.

Basically, I'm not entirely sure what to make of it, other than to say that the last quarter is very, very tense and highly successful.

(Another problem, but not the authors, is the number of typos here. For a Faber book and a fine idea for a series, this is really just a bit crap. Pull your socks up.)

[George Gale · Rating 2 out of 5]

Once upon a time I went on a writing course. I say writing course- it was a morning in a library with an author who had agreed to come and do some creative writing things. I was there entiiiirely to make up the numbers. I remember very little of it, including who the author was, but I do recall her top tip was to make sure the tone was set early. If, she said (and I believe this is more or less verbatim), you want people to be able to walk through walls - then have something like that happen in the first chapter. Don't just have people suddenly walk through walls a third of the way through, or your readers brain may well just go "ya wot mate?" and leave before the interval.

That stopped being verbatim at some point, there. I by-and-large (although privitely) disagreed with her on this, and some of my very favourite books ignore this rule. BUT I think the reason I didn't like Kolymsky Heights boils down to that one author's maybe quite contentious top tip. I've hidden this because of spoilers so I'm quite happy to spoiler away: There's this secret, right? In this really secret artic base, yeh? And the main crux of the book is following this implausibly adept guy get in to find out what it is. (I have no beef with Porter, the implausibly adept guy. He's fine. If he were plausibly inept, then what'd be the point of the story?)

MY beef instead is with the nature of the secret. And frankly, it could have been ANYTHING. pretty much anything. The secret is entirely, as far as I can see, irrelevant to the story. But it still is part of the story, and it's this: that they've bred talking chimpanzees. Ya wot, mate.

So if this book had been "oh I'm kinda sci-fi-y" from the start, then I'd have been a bit more accepting of the talking apes. But when they arrived, my reading brain just threw all its toys out of the pram, went and had a bit of a break, and left whatever remained to finish the book. It's a fine book. I just wasn't happy to suspend my disbelief as far as was required. I can believe a guy builds a car by himself in a freezing cave. I can believe everyone falls madly in love with him for no discernably good reason. Those are all acceptable things within the spy-story framework. Talking chimpanzees are not.

But if they are for you, maybe you'll give it more stars.

[Alice · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was given a pile of books by my boyfriend's mother to read and this was one of them. I thought I better give one a go before I see her and she asks if I've read any. This one sounded pretty interesting with the promise of spies and secret Russian science.. plus Philip Pullman says it is one of the best books he has ever read, and I love Philip Pullman's books. Turns out Philip and I have VERY different taste in books.. I got over half way through this then had to give up. Life is too short for boring books.

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! I got to page 300 and we're still not actually the secret Russian science facility! I did not sign up for the incredibly tedious detail of what goes into a spy mission (not sparing anything about driving trucks in Siberia!).. I wanted action and suspense and some weird science!

The protagonist (once he finally appears many chapters in that introduced characters who then disappear) Johnny Porter I struggled to find relatable or even realistic. I struggled to find his personality and he seemed a bit too good at everything, nothing was ever difficult.. in the 300 pages I read he never had any difficulties.. and he's not even a trained Agent. He's just some guy who met the Russian scientist decades ago, is insanely good at languages and looks like he could pass for a Siberian native. Women also throw themselves at him.. if he meets a woman under 40 they will pretty soon be wanting to sleep with him. Something he does with zero care, thought or passion.

I'd have forgiven that if I'd been at all engaged in the story. It wasn't the plot I thought the blurb on the back was promising me. There was no suspense and no action in the first 300 pages (I can't say what happened after). There was nothing "thrilling" about it. It never once felt like Johnny was in any danger, despite his tight time line there was not any question that he'd be successful.

Disappointing!

I do highly recommend anything written by Philip Pullman though!

[Tim Pendry · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 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.

[Ernst · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ach, was soll ich sagen, es gäbe sicher Gründe Sterne abzuziehen, aber mir fallen aus der großen zeitlichen Distanz keine ein und ich erinnere mich nur noch, dass es für mich im Gefolge von Fräulein Smilla der etwas simpler geschriebene aber mindestens genau so packende Roman war und in seinem Genre bleibt es schlicht der beste Abenteuer-Thriller, den ich je gelesen habe. Bin allerdings kein Experte in diesem Genre. Die Spannung ist maximal, die Charaktere sind interessant, die Story fulminant, die Themen (damals) hochaktuell und noch recht neu (Gentechnik, Klonen von Menschen…) und für mich (damals) auch ein gewichtiges Argument: ein Großteil spielt in Sibirien. Und damals war ich ein bisschen süchtig nach Literatur in Schnee und Eis.

Inhalt ist eh sehr gut in der Book Description dargestellt… Ein Mann auf sich allein gestellt, der eine Mission Impossible umsetzen soll, der aber auch ganz besondere Fähigkeiten hat …

[Johnny G. · Rating 2 out of 5]

If renown English author Philip Pullman thought that this was the best thriller he's ever read, then, with all due respect, he hasn't read many thrillers! I thought this book would be about a top-secret Russian laboratory deep in Siberia, and it turned out to be mostly about the perilous adventure to get in and out of the place. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I was intrigued more about the destination - not the journey. There were places I could not stop reading, and there were other places I glossed over because they were dull, or poorly written. Someone recommended this from my local library Advisory Council, but I might be the only one who actually reads it, especially since it's a 2-star book.

[Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book I keep coming back to as it is a masterful story of an amazing resourceful but believable main character isolated in a cold and frozen land but somehow I warmed to him. The main reason for him being there sometimes becomes secondary to how he is going to achieve it but the author drives the plot on relentlessly, whilst stretching credulity a little at the end, still left me satisfied and wondering whether there was some mileage left for Johnny Porter. There may be,I haven't read any of Davidsons other novels but intend to do so.

[Cphe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a favourite by any means. The first half was slow going but the second half more action/thriller driven. Enjoyed the setting of Siberia and the main character. I should have enjoyed this more because it ticked a lot of boxes for a thriller but the "why" of the plot just didn't live up to the hype.

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Flawed, but oh so readable!

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.

A mysterious coded message requests he ‘break into’ the toppest secret research facility in Siberia - so secret that no one who enters is allowed to leave. Why does he have to do this? I can’t even remember, and I reckon it doesn’t really matter. The joy is in the ingenuity and style with which he accomplishes it. And then leaves. Spectacularly.

Plot - ridiculous, but there is a dread and a horror alluded to early on which I was disappointed was not pursued as a significant plot reveal through the middle part of the book. However, the final phase of the book - Porter’s escape (successful or unsuccessful, I’m not saying) - is some of the most thrilling action I’ve read in a long time!

Characters - none of them really believable. Or even likeable, I felt. They mostly play third or fourth fiddle to Johnny P in any case. But they are not poorly-drawn enough, and he is not unlikeable enough, to crash the novel. It’s not really that he’s unlikeable exactly; it’s more that I felt I never knew him. He was too busy being other diverse characters for the reader to get to know the real him.

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.

Davidson’s prose is very readable (the many typos notwithstanding!), although maybe a little over-involved with some of the many technicalities involved in the caper.

But for me it was the setting of Siberia itself which left a palpable chill in the room after I put the book down. The snow is Serious Snow. The ice is deadly. The nights go on forever and people need lots of clothes. It’s bleak. It’s barren. I want to go there.

[Bill · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've read a couple of other thrillers by Lionel Davidson and found them entertaining. I honestly gave Kolymsky Heights a good try, even got over half way through it. But I just could not finish it. That does not happen very often, I will tell you.

It may have been because my mood wouldn't let me get into it but it also just wasn't a great story. Basically, this is the premise as I understood it. A Russian scientist sends a message to an acquaintance in the UK, a scientist he met many years ago at a conference in England. He has something that he needs to get out of Russia. He wants a third acquaintance to come and get it. This third acquaintance is a Canadian native, who also attended the conference.

And thus begins the story. The first third describes Porter's journey from Canada, to Japan and then onto a freighter to Northern Russia and his efforts establish himself in Russia so he can get to the scientist's locale. And now he has met the scientist and we're about to find out what it's all about. But by now, all I can say is 'nyahh.. who cares'. It's all just a bit laborious and not worth finishing. Very disappointing. I do have one more Davidson story, a mystery, that I will try. Hoping it's more like the earlier efforts. (1 star)

[Benito Jr. · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 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.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a bit bemused why Philip Pulman waxes lyrically over this novel. It will s a good story if wildly far fetched. I see the author has won the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award three times so I plan to read his earlier novels.

The book is about a quest, much like Frodo and his journey to dispose of the ring. The problem I had with the hero Johnny Porter was he did not have the flaws Frodo had. He was basically good at everything from languages, building cars, fighting and just to perfect.

The description of Siberia and the native people was interesting and I liked the style of writing but again when he achieves his quest it is just silly.

[Andy · Rating 1 out of 5]

From looking at various websites, most readers rate this as five stars. A minority rate it as one star and I am one of those. Admittedly I gave up at about page 200, but I simply was not gripped. Likewise, I found I could not relate to the hero, Porter, and I really couldn't care less what happened to him. There's huge tracts of detail in the book but for me it didn't add to the pace, it merely seemed to waste time. The plot in isolation is very good and I couldn't help thinking what Frederick Forsyth would have done with it.

[Jacqueline Mckevitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Struggled to get going. Persevered and was hooked until the end. Seldom reread books, but will definitely return to this one.

[Rae · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I developed Stockholm Syndrome with this book.

I find myself looking back on it with fondness now it is no longer keeping me from reading other (better) books. Still, I lamented the fact that I can't DNF a book for the first 300 or so pages, so I can't really give it more than 2 stars.

This is the story of a super-intelligent polyglot who gets summoned to Siberia for not-very-clear reasons. Davidson goes into painstaking detail with the travel arrangements and administrative aspects, at the expense of anything interesting happening.

Eventually, we do get to find out (along with our protagonist) what he is risking death and willing to kill for in a bizarre spurt of exposition (and incongruous speculative fiction.) Personally, a few hundred pages in felt a bit late to establish a sense of purpose, especially after I had already endured scene after scene of interminable setting up of equipment and collecting fish for colleagues etc.

Things do get a bit more pacey toward the end, but no more plausible.

Philip Pullman says this is the best thriller he's ever read. Maybe if you really like transport?

[Michael Martz · Rating 3 out of 5]

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???) and thought I'd be in for a superior reading experience. Not! Note to self: don't rely on author's blurbs about other authors!

The plot is pretty interesting, but it sure takes a long time to get to the point. What I thought would be a major part of the story line was introduced in the Prologue: an intact 'oldest human' is discovered encased in ice and an entire Russian research complex is built around it in Siberia. As the novel begins, a message is passed from the complex via incredible means to a British researcher, it's deciphered, the CIA gets involved, and a decision is eventually made to insert a spy (who was selected by the Russian researcher) somehow into the impregnable complex to find out exactly what's going on and to report back to the good guys. Sounds simple, right?

Until the last section, the story moves at a glacial pace, which is appropriate I suppose based on where the research facility is located. 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). The amount of training he goes through once he agrees is huge and the planning is meticulous, but much of the success of the operation will depend upon his ingenuity. It eventually kicks off and he manages to put himself into position to maybe get access to the person he needs to contact. This all occurs in excruciatingly slow motion, but based on the level of risk he had to deal with on an almost minute-by-minute basis, perhaps that was the only way to proceed?

In addition to its pace, other problems I had with Lionel Davidson's thriller were with the writing style, the main character's toolset, and the 'talking apes'. Davidson's writing, at least to me, was very strange and almost seemed at times to be a translation or an attempt to do fiction in a non-fiction style. The subject matter and plot were interesting enough to have been covered in a much more readable format. I'm not saying it needed to be 'dumbed down'- in fact, it needed to be 'smartened up', if anything. The planning and later activities were covered at such a minute level of detail that the prose really needed to be punched up to maintain reader interest. The main character, who began as a rather odd academic sort who loved his privacy and wanted to be left alone, developed throughout the book into a sort of super-McGyver type who not only could do amazing things mechanically and physically but also speak virtually any language and dialect. The whole 'talking apes' thing, which is what I expected the book to have as a significant part of the plot, resurfaced again once the spy finally gained access to the facility but it really was handled in a perfunctory way and left me scratching my head.

Kolymsky Heights was saved by the last section, where our spy is on the run and a professional Russian investigator begins tracking him mostly through logic. The conclusion was a little out there, but all's well that ends well, I reckon.

[Marc Pastor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Per fi.
Per alguna raó que desconec, aquesta novel·la no em permetia abandonar-la, però m'anava desesperant a poc a poc.
Bé, sí que la conec.
És un tema de dosificació de la informació i manteniment de les expectatives.
Comença com un thriller d'espionatge amb tocs de ciència-ficció: des d'un satèl·lit americà (o anglès, ja no ho recordo; deixem-ho en occidental) s'observa que hi ha una base científica russa a prop del pol nord, en una regió apartadíssima i desolada, on s'hi poden veure... homínids.
Els americans (on anglesos; occidentals, vaja) volen enviar-hi un espia perquè hi ha un comunicat d'algú de dins de la base que demana ajuda (o filtra informació, tampoc no ho recordo).
Pinta bé.
Doncs no.
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.
I la novel·la t'explica tot el puto viatge, pas a pas. De fet, en fa una novel·la de cada identitat que usa el protagonista en el seu trajecte com a mariner, com a camioner, com a indígena. És un puto mortadel·lo. I tu vols que arribi a la base russa d'un coi de vegada i no ho fa fins a la pàgina 336.
I la revelació que hi ha allà, una espècie d'illa del doctor Moreau moderna, és totalment decebedora.
Però encara hi ha més: després d'aquesta revelació encara ens queden una dues-centes pàgines de fugida que, personalment, he anat llegint en diagonal. Tot allò que l'autor s'havia estalviat en descripcions dels paratges que travessa el protagonista, ho encabeix en aquestes darreres dues-centes pàgines d'un paio conduint una màquina llevaneus.
Mira, no.
Massa soroll per no res.
I tot i així, es va deixant llegir, com si et prometés que el millor sempre està per arribar.
Apa, a una altra cosa, que ja en tenia ganes.

[Rob Kitchin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kolymsky Heights is a spy-adventure tale written by three-times CWA gold dagger winner, Lionel Davidson. In the edition I read, Philip Pullman had written a short essay in which he pronounced that the book is the best thriller he's ever read. While there’s much to admire about the story, I’m not convinced it’s as good as Pullman declares. What Davidson does well is the patient build-up. Porter doesn’t zip-in and out of Russia leaving a trail of carnage like a double-zero agent. He’s slipped in via a Japanese trading ship and he establishes himself as part of the local community. It takes weeks to find a viable way into the secret lab and several more to set up an attempt to breach the security. The timespan and pace enables some nice characterisation and a strong sense of place. It took a little while for the story to get going and at times there is an over-elaboration or description that has little plot relevance. I also wasn’t convinced by some of the plot elements, and Porter is a little too extraordinary in terms of his language and acting ability, though every leading man in a thriller usually has some super-human abilities. That said, the plot hook was interesting and by halfway through it’s a real page-turner. In particular, the extended denouement was very nicely done from both Porter’s and a Russian general’s perspective. Overall, an entertaining adventure-spy tale.

[Katia N · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good old thriller, not scary, not haunting and not very psychologic either, but packed with actions. It reminded me James Bond, but a tiny bit more clever. Also i liked setting very much - somewhere deep in Siberia. It conformed with my archetypical memories of Russia - altruistic, fiendishly clever scientists, evil and dangerous security services, hospitable people and the last but not least - devoted, loving and selfless women!

Good, a bit naive, but very intelligent read within the genre.

[Maria Carmo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece! Five stars because it is not possible to give 10!
The plot is extremely rigorous and the characters are exquisitely drawn, the Author has managed to leave us a book with such a high standard that it becomes unrepeatable. The landscapes, the scientific rigor, the probity with which it is written, has totally conquered me, and I agree with Phillip Pullmann's prologue!
Absolutely a good read!

Maria Carmo,

Lisbon, 3 July 2018.

[Juan Nalerio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thriller adictivo.
Es el típico libro para leer de corrido y que no afloje la tensión.
Esquema de búsqueda clásico: viaje inicial-encuentro de lo q se buscaba-salida. Muy bien narrado.
A buscar más del autor.

[José Nebreda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Al contrario que la mayoría de las novelas esta va ganando fuerza y las 200 últimas páginas son una angustiosa delicia.