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The Davidian Report
Here for your delectation is the SPECTACULAR AND RARE--------------THE DAVIDIAN REPORT by DOROTHY B. HUGHES................ ................ No mention of David Koresh............ To stop a Communist plot, a secretive man searches Los Angeles for a confidential report When bad weather forces his flight to Los Angeles to land outside of town, Steve Wintress agrees to share a car with three a shy young soldier, a Justice Department official, and an icy Hollywood dame. They don’t know it yet, but all four strangers have something in common—and one of them might kill to get it. A Communist defector has smuggled the priceless Davidian report out of East Berlin, and every secret agency in the world wants it. The report is somewhere in LA. Steve will have to battle the CIA, FBI, and the Communist Party in this adventure. ................This is the softcover only stated BANTAM FIRST EDITION from JUNE 1979. Other than a ex lib markings, the mylar-covered book is in very good condition. There are no rips, tears, etc.---and the pages and binding are tight (see photo). The book is in excellent reading condition. There are no rips, tears, etc.---and the pages and binding are tight (see photo). ** All books listed as FIRST EDITIONS are stated by the publisher in words or number lines--or--only stated editions that include only the publisher and publication date. Check my feedback to see that I sell exactly as I describe. So bid now for this magnificent, impossible-to-find THRILLER COLLECTIBLE.
183 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1952
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About the author
Dorothy B. Hughes
66 books299 followersDorothy B. Hughes (1904–1993) was a mystery author and literary critic. Born in Kansas City, she studied at Columbia University, and won an award from the Yale Series of Younger Poets for her first book, the poetry collection Dark Certainty (1931). After writing several unsuccessful manuscripts, she published The So Blue Marble in 1940. A New York–based mystery, it won praise for its hardboiled prose, which was due, in part, to Hughes’s editor, who demanded she cut 25,000 words from the book.
Hughes published thirteen more novels, the best known of which are In a Lonely Place (1947) and Ride the Pink Horse (1946). Both were made into successful films. In the early fifties, Hughes largely stopped writing fiction, preferring to focus on criticism, for which she would go on to win an Edgar Award. In 1978, the Mystery Writers of America presented Hughes with the Grand Master Award for literary achievement.
Hughes published thirteen more novels, the best known of which are In a Lonely Place (1947) and Ride the Pink Horse (1946). Both were made into successful films. In the early fifties, Hughes largely stopped writing fiction, preferring to focus on criticism, for which she would go on to win an Edgar Award. In 1978, the Mystery Writers of America presented Hughes with the Grand Master Award for literary achievement.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 22, 2015
The Christmas Parade on Hollywood Blvd provides a glitzy-tacky setting for post-war2 Commie mayhem in Los Angeles as our hero, secret agent Steve Wintress, tries to secure the McGuffin and find out who killed his pal at LAX. ~ Can he get out of Beverly Hills alive? ~ Can anyone?
February 1, 2016
The enigmatic Steve Wintress arrives in Los Angeles from Berlin, having been sent here by his superiors to collect a report from the renegade Soviet spy Davidian on various secret Soviet plans. Steve's plane was diverted because of fog, and he spent the last part of the journey in a limo with a young soldier on furlough, who's likewise been serving in Berlin; a naive young woman, the niece of Beverly Hills wealth; and a pompous pillar of the Justice Department. Steve suspects the latter of in fact being an FBI field officer, and he's similarly suspicious of the other two. Just to increase his paranoia, he discovers that the agent scheduled to greet him at the airport has been murdered.
We spend the next few days in Steve's company as he combs the plusher and the seedier parts of Hollywood in search of Davidian. One of the first people he meets during his quest is the sultry ex-dancer Janni, with whom he had a torrid relationship in Berlin but who now hates him because she believes he ruthlessly dumped her. At grave risk of being torn apart by his feelings for her, Steve nevertheless stays sufficiently on the ball to keep both FBI trackers and the sleeper-cell communists with whom he must deal guessing . . .
Hughes here captures about three-quarters of the claustrophobia she achieved in her masterpiece, In a Lonely Place, and does so using much the same techniques: a viewpoint figure who seems significantly less than trustworthy (although Steve proves not nearly so untrustworthy as In a Lonely Place's Dix, you bet!), a version of Los Angeles (well, Hollywood) that's always kept just out of focus, and her own distinctive narrative style, so that reading the tale is a little like watching a tightrope walker who has forgone the use of a safety net -- you feel that you'd better keep reading Real Quick in case everything somehow falls apart and collapses in a heap. Hughes embellishes this latter aspect through quaint word-usages, jumpy sentence construction and a sometimes quite bizarre vocabulary.
The end result is a quick-moving, very readable novel of intrigue that never quite manages to set the pulse racing. I enjoyed reading it, while always aware while doing so that by this time next week I'll probably remember very little about it. It's second-tier Hughes, but that's still a pretty lofty tier to be on.
We spend the next few days in Steve's company as he combs the plusher and the seedier parts of Hollywood in search of Davidian. One of the first people he meets during his quest is the sultry ex-dancer Janni, with whom he had a torrid relationship in Berlin but who now hates him because she believes he ruthlessly dumped her. At grave risk of being torn apart by his feelings for her, Steve nevertheless stays sufficiently on the ball to keep both FBI trackers and the sleeper-cell communists with whom he must deal guessing . . .
Hughes here captures about three-quarters of the claustrophobia she achieved in her masterpiece, In a Lonely Place, and does so using much the same techniques: a viewpoint figure who seems significantly less than trustworthy (although Steve proves not nearly so untrustworthy as In a Lonely Place's Dix, you bet!), a version of Los Angeles (well, Hollywood) that's always kept just out of focus, and her own distinctive narrative style, so that reading the tale is a little like watching a tightrope walker who has forgone the use of a safety net -- you feel that you'd better keep reading Real Quick in case everything somehow falls apart and collapses in a heap. Hughes embellishes this latter aspect through quaint word-usages, jumpy sentence construction and a sometimes quite bizarre vocabulary.
The end result is a quick-moving, very readable novel of intrigue that never quite manages to set the pulse racing. I enjoyed reading it, while always aware while doing so that by this time next week I'll probably remember very little about it. It's second-tier Hughes, but that's still a pretty lofty tier to be on.
April 20, 2021
Everyone seeks the mysterious report that will prevent a nightmare future.
Mystery Review: The Davidian Report (also known as The Body on the Bench) was the penultimate novel by Dorothy B. Hughes (1904-1993), the queen of hard-boiled noir. It's more of a Cold War spy thriller, but still reads like a tough-guy detective story. Not as good as her very best, but a quality read with a gem on every page. She writes with a poet's eye and creates scenes seen only by a slumming street corner cynic: "the lobby smoldered in its customary shadow," "a worn leather armchair, eternally holding the sag of a large man," "what once had been the refuge of old men and pigeons," "the touch of her slippers on the staircase blurred back to his ears," "early twilight sifted down." An airplane in the fog is a "machine creeping through gray fur." From a car one sees "the shops growing more shabby in neighborhoods left behind as the crocodile metropolis crawled westward." Her descriptions are so carefully carved that the reader begins to take them for granted. In The Davidian Report Hughes is always intelligent, precise, aware. The suspense builds quietly till it hums just below the consciousness like summer cicadas. Given this was published in 1952, there's a daub of ardent Americanism, but mostly it's buried with the desperation of characters living in a world without sincerity or honesty. Nobody trusts no one. Having read over half her novels (I'm on a mission), Dorothy Hughes has never disappointed, and The Davidian Report is no exception. [4★]
Mystery Review: The Davidian Report (also known as The Body on the Bench) was the penultimate novel by Dorothy B. Hughes (1904-1993), the queen of hard-boiled noir. It's more of a Cold War spy thriller, but still reads like a tough-guy detective story. Not as good as her very best, but a quality read with a gem on every page. She writes with a poet's eye and creates scenes seen only by a slumming street corner cynic: "the lobby smoldered in its customary shadow," "a worn leather armchair, eternally holding the sag of a large man," "what once had been the refuge of old men and pigeons," "the touch of her slippers on the staircase blurred back to his ears," "early twilight sifted down." An airplane in the fog is a "machine creeping through gray fur." From a car one sees "the shops growing more shabby in neighborhoods left behind as the crocodile metropolis crawled westward." Her descriptions are so carefully carved that the reader begins to take them for granted. In The Davidian Report Hughes is always intelligent, precise, aware. The suspense builds quietly till it hums just below the consciousness like summer cicadas. Given this was published in 1952, there's a daub of ardent Americanism, but mostly it's buried with the desperation of characters living in a world without sincerity or honesty. Nobody trusts no one. Having read over half her novels (I'm on a mission), Dorothy Hughes has never disappointed, and The Davidian Report is no exception. [4★]
January 2, 2025
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featuring a clean image of the 1952 hardcover.
Steve Wintress boarded the overnight flight to Los Angeles, knowing any one of the passengers could be an enemy agent - the young soldier in the ill-fitting uniform in the back row; the young blonde in the tweed suit and horn rimmed glasses; the big fellow with the well-cut dark hair across the aisle. Steve is vigilant, playing a lone hand on this assignment; the Davidian report was too important not to take bold steps to win.
When fog shuts down L.A., they land at Palmdale and the four congenial strangers share a car into town. Steve is late to meet his next contact, and finds him recently murdered. The operatives at the safe house have no information - Davidian has been seen in Hollywood, but no one can contact him.
The four continue to associate - the young soldier Reuben shares a hotel room with Steve, and the big fellow is Haig Armour, attorney with the FBI Justice Department, who invites the young woman Feather Talle out for dinner. Her Uncle is a film director who famously worked in Berlin - coincidentally, Reuben is a G.I. just out of Berlin. Our narrator Steve is actually Stefan Winterich, an American working to achieve the Davidian report for the Communist Party, or whomever is highest bidder. For on his tail are the Germans, the Americans, the Russians, and all operatives in-between - vying for the report which contains the war plans for the Soviet expansion in Western Europe.
All countries have a file on Davidian - and on Stefan Winterich.
Steve walks the lonely streets of Hollywood, a dark and desolate California Christmas - only once catching a glimpse of Davidian lost in the crowds of a Santa Claus parade. Steve meets up with his old lover from Berlin, Janni, once the star dancer in Eastern Zone black market cafes, now reduced to selling tickets at a 24-hour cinema. Only she knows where Davidian is, and no longer trusts Steve.
Steve is an unlikely character for the reader to hold as the 'hero', a Communist who will sell out to the highest bidder, and betray anyone to survive. This is a novel of trust and duplicity, the report merely the MacGuffin which moves the players around. Steve seeks personal gains rather than political ideals - a Communist agent working against the special agents of the Intelligence community and the Counter-Intelligence Corps.
Unless, this was all planned to remove Steve from the equation permanently.
Dorothy B. Hughes is a terrific writer of mysteries; this is the first spy novel I have read of hers, and she captures well unease and tension in ordinary situations. The writing has a deceptively simple and spare tone, masking the complex and well plotted machinations beneath. Recommended.
Her title In A Lonely Place was made into the classic 1947 Humphrey Bogart film, and Ride The Pink Horse was filmed in 1946 with Robert Montgomery.
featuring a clean image of the 1952 hardcover.
Steve Wintress boarded the overnight flight to Los Angeles, knowing any one of the passengers could be an enemy agent - the young soldier in the ill-fitting uniform in the back row; the young blonde in the tweed suit and horn rimmed glasses; the big fellow with the well-cut dark hair across the aisle. Steve is vigilant, playing a lone hand on this assignment; the Davidian report was too important not to take bold steps to win.
When fog shuts down L.A., they land at Palmdale and the four congenial strangers share a car into town. Steve is late to meet his next contact, and finds him recently murdered. The operatives at the safe house have no information - Davidian has been seen in Hollywood, but no one can contact him.
The four continue to associate - the young soldier Reuben shares a hotel room with Steve, and the big fellow is Haig Armour, attorney with the FBI Justice Department, who invites the young woman Feather Talle out for dinner. Her Uncle is a film director who famously worked in Berlin - coincidentally, Reuben is a G.I. just out of Berlin. Our narrator Steve is actually Stefan Winterich, an American working to achieve the Davidian report for the Communist Party, or whomever is highest bidder. For on his tail are the Germans, the Americans, the Russians, and all operatives in-between - vying for the report which contains the war plans for the Soviet expansion in Western Europe.
All countries have a file on Davidian - and on Stefan Winterich.
Steve walks the lonely streets of Hollywood, a dark and desolate California Christmas - only once catching a glimpse of Davidian lost in the crowds of a Santa Claus parade. Steve meets up with his old lover from Berlin, Janni, once the star dancer in Eastern Zone black market cafes, now reduced to selling tickets at a 24-hour cinema. Only she knows where Davidian is, and no longer trusts Steve.
Steve is an unlikely character for the reader to hold as the 'hero', a Communist who will sell out to the highest bidder, and betray anyone to survive. This is a novel of trust and duplicity, the report merely the MacGuffin which moves the players around. Steve seeks personal gains rather than political ideals - a Communist agent working against the special agents of the Intelligence community and the Counter-Intelligence Corps.
Unless, this was all planned to remove Steve from the equation permanently.
Dorothy B. Hughes is a terrific writer of mysteries; this is the first spy novel I have read of hers, and she captures well unease and tension in ordinary situations. The writing has a deceptively simple and spare tone, masking the complex and well plotted machinations beneath. Recommended.
Her title In A Lonely Place was made into the classic 1947 Humphrey Bogart film, and Ride The Pink Horse was filmed in 1946 with Robert Montgomery.
March 31, 2023
Always swiftly paced, resplendent with terse observations by characters cornered into desperation, and sprinkled with the anticipated macabre jocundity that one should expect from a page-turning thriller.
That certain, unnecessary characters are brought into focus for particular scenes or moments doesn’t detract from the overall experience; but it might leave some wondering if there’s a limit to the microcosm when casting players in a tale of less than 200 pages.
Some loose ends remain that way, which is a bold choice; this book is about the struggles for closure (both personal and professional) and hoo boy does it deliver.
That certain, unnecessary characters are brought into focus for particular scenes or moments doesn’t detract from the overall experience; but it might leave some wondering if there’s a limit to the microcosm when casting players in a tale of less than 200 pages.
Some loose ends remain that way, which is a bold choice; this book is about the struggles for closure (both personal and professional) and hoo boy does it deliver.
August 16, 2022
Don't talk to strangers It could be deadly
A secretive man searches greater Los Angeles for a top secret report. He is to trust no one. The report was stolen from the Soviet Union, now identified as Russia. This is a cold war active case. I liked this book.
A secretive man searches greater Los Angeles for a top secret report. He is to trust no one. The report was stolen from the Soviet Union, now identified as Russia. This is a cold war active case. I liked this book.
May 3, 2020
An intriguing, somewhat confused espionage novel of a commie agent in L. A. trying to find an elusive forger. Some local color but not Hughes’s best.
Read
June 4, 2021Via Kindle Unlimited. Didn't end how I imagined. Love for the setting / locations & vibe / relaxing entertainment / relieved from judging it by today's standards.
September 10, 2022
Much like the fog that veiled the airport in the opening scene, I found this book opaque and bewildering. Although I appreciated the gritty Hollywood setting, the plot meandered and the characters were unlikeable.
March 16, 2024
He faltered, "Mr. Grasse was a good man."
Steve said shortly, "He was a friend of mine."
Steve said shortly, "He was a friend of mine."
July 24, 2010
A Cold War spy thriller written in 1952. The plot was OK and kept me turning the pages, but the dialogue seemed too contrived and the characters one dimensional.
August 21, 2022
Very good read.
The edition that I read had the title as THE DAVIDIAN REPORT.
The edition that I read had the title as THE DAVIDIAN REPORT.
January 2, 2016
aka The Davidian Report
August 25, 2016
Thin compared to Blackbirder or Candy Kid. Ends well.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews