By Lionel Davidson (died 21 October 2009)
Narrated by Peter Noble
Published by St Martins Press (HB), Faber & Faber (e) https://www.faber.co.uk/ @FaberBooks, F.W. Howes Ltd (audio) https://www.wfhowes.co.uk/ Whole Story Audiobooks
362 pages (15 Hours and 55 minutes) ISBN 9780312114077
Publication date 1 September 1994 (Audible 2 June 2016)
I managed to find an audiobook version on the Libby Library App https://www.overdrive.com/apps/libby? @LibbyApp. Like many before me, libraries have been an important part of my life, especially when growing up. Nowadays you don’t even have to visit in person, with a wide offering as eBooks and audiobooks. Remember support your local library service and independent book seller.
Background
I came across this book in one of those wonderful haphazard ways. We were sitting having a drink with Fiona Erskine http://thechemicaldetective.com @erskine_fiona after her recent appearance at Hull Noir https://www.hullnoir.com/ @HullNoir, talking about her latest novel Chemical Code, and naturally books featured prominently.
Fiona is a chemical engineer as well as a crime author and this has an influence in her writing, in both the Jaq Silver series and her stand-alone Phosphate Rocks. We discussed the strange combination of engineer/fiction writer and she mentioned Lionel Davidson, specifically his novel Kolymsky Heights with its unusual protagonist Johnny Porter. When it was mentioned that Davidson was born in Hull and the book was from the mid-nineties my ‘book meter’ swung violently into the red. How could I have missed this? Like many natives of small cities and towns, any connection with the place is of interest to me, so I had to source a copy and put the record straight. (Fiona’s admiration for Porter was also mentioned to The Crime Book Girl @crimebookgrrl in a recent interview so she wasn’t just being nice to Hull folk.)
Although born in Hull, Lionel Davidson was living down in ‘that there London’ and Kolymsky Heights was published after a sixteen-year hiatus from his other espionage thrillers, which may well explain why I missed it first time around.
The Cover
There are several covers, all centring on snowbound desolation, which is the setting for much of the novel.
From the blurb
Kolymsky Heights. A Siberian hell lost in endless night: the perfect setting for an underground Russian research station. It’s 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 wildness to the West in order to summon the one man alive capable of achieving the impossible …
The Narrator
The nation is great considering the range of voices and accents required in what is quite a long audiobook. I loved Johnny Porter being voiced like a Keanu Reeves in a surfer-dude-waster role, which is quite fitting with the Canadian connection but the angry Russian general was my personal favourite.
The introduction
The version I listened to has an introduction by Philip Pullman. Authors provide quotes for book covers and blurb all the time, but here is a lengthy foreword to the novel, the one he rates as the greatest thriller of all time. It’s a book he has reread several times and he sets out some of the reasoning behind his rather bold claim. He likens the storyline to the traditional ‘quest’ which has been popular since the times of Ancient Greece and features heavily in traditional Greek Mythology.
My thoughts
Well, Kolymsky Heights is an unashamed ‘Boys-Own’ style thriller which if read with that in mind and the spirit intended, is a whole lot of fun. The plot is borderline ludicrous, the hero Johnny Porter is quite preposterous, but it’s researched to an inch of its life and written with real conviction which will win most readers over. The real joy is in the journey, its something of a rollercoaster of a ride and quite a long one at that.
Written and set not long after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of Eastern European alliances, it cleverly works around the loss of the traditional cold war tensions by setting the action in a remote location. Conspiracy theorists centre in on what USA has been doing in Area 51, but Russia has vast remote regions of Siberia to carry out their secret research. The goal part of Porter’s quest is to reach one such research station, to rendezvous with a respected scientist he briefly met, who has asked for him to come in person.
The setting is brilliant, the frozen wastes in the far east bordering China and North Korea but just comparatively short journey to freedom of Japan and Alaska. This is a world away from Moscow and St Petersburg and a welcome change for the reader. Yes, there’s a lot of snowy wasteland descriptions but Davidson works it well within the storyline, so it never gets dull with the obligatory chase part of the quest quite innovative.
Our improbable hero is something of a polymath come miracle-man, with a particularly unusual background. He is native Canadian described as Indian in the text, but that was nearly thirty years ago. Physically strong, of striking appearance, attractive to women, a biology and anthropology professor who is multilingual (speaking a couple of dozen languages, many of indigenous people and some very rare), what is there not to like. Growing up I would have wanted to be Johnny Porter, stuff James Bond and his gadgets. He’s also rather handy as he summons the spirt of MacGyver left with a Meccano set for Christmas at one point, a bit silly, but wonderfully creative so I’ll not spoil it.
The portrayal of the indigenous people is well considered and sympathetic which is refreshing. There are many distinct local races which in the past have been lumped together as ‘Indians’ or ‘Eskimos’, here they are given the due recognition they deserve, and we get short glimpses of their lives. These are hard lives in a harsh environment, where just existence is a struggle but produces warm and generous people one their insularity is penetrated. Peoples ruled by Russia but not quite conquered and their existence controlled.
It is so well researched with each step is carefully thought out and with the action coming only sporadically, that it may feel a little bit long to some readers. Every step is laid out so it remains credible or on the edge of credibility, which will convince many to stick with it and they are rewarded in the end.
Intelligent, compelling with some outrageous plotting Kolymsky Heights is a great escapist thriller set in an unusual location. The greatest of all time? Not sure about that Mr. Pullman but certainly an entertaining few hours in the company of Mr. Porter.
Kolymsky Heights can be purchased direct from the publisher here
The author
Lionel Davidson was born in 1922 in Hull, Yorkshire. He left school early and worked as a reporter before serving in the Royal Navy during the Second World War. His first novel, The Night of Wenceslas, was published in 1960 to great critical acclaim and drew comparisons to Graham Greene and John le Carré. It was followed by The Rose of Tibet (1962), A Long Way to Shiloh (1966), The Chelsea Murders (1978) and Kolymsky Heights (1994). He was thrice the recipient of the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award and, in 2001, was awarded the CWA’s Cartier Diamond Dagger lifetime achievement award. He died in 2009. (Source: Faber & Faber
See also Obituary at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obitu…
[this reference added 12-Aug-2013].
Peter turns the page 