Kolymsky Heights
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4.4 • 46 Ratings
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- £7.49
Publisher Description
A sensational classic: this chilling tale of Siberian espionage is 'the best thriller I've ever read' (Philip Pullman) ranking with 'The Silence of the Lambs, Casino Royale and Smiley's People' (Spectator).
'Hugely thrilling, brilliantly written, perfect ... I didn't want this book to end.' (Anthony Horowitz)
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY PHILIP PULLMAN
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 ...
'Sensationally good ... One of the great thrillers of the last century.' (Charles Cumming)
'As significant as ... le Carré in bringing a gritty new realism to the thriller.' (Sunday Telegraph)
'A breathless story of fear and courage.'(Daily Telegraph)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Davidson's first thriller in 16 years is likely to be a bestseller here, as it already is in Britain. When an aging Oxford don gets a coded message from a forgotten Russian colleague, Efraim Rogachev, that snares the interest of SIS and the CIA, the don grudgingly travels to British Columbia to enlist the aid of the man Rogachev seeks: Johnny Porter (ne Jean-Baptiste Porteur), a Gitskan Indian. A polymath and former Rhodes scholar with a talent for language, Porter had years before met the Russian, who now runs a Siberian science installation so secret the CIA didn't know it existed until an explosion was caught on satellite film. Rogachev is determined to get his work out of the paranoid grasp of post-Soviet Russia's bureaucracy, and the only person he trusts to do the job is Porter. The narrative focuses on how Porter--part James Bond, part Rambo and all genius--gets into the installation and escapes with the information. Along the way, he assumes various disguises (a Korean, an Evenk, a Chukchi), gets involved in Siberian tribal life, builds a Russian jeep and even falls in love, with the action culminating in a nerve-wracking flight across eastern Siberia that climaxes in a bullet-splattered dash over the frozen Bering Strait--and then there's a drop-dead romantic ending. To date, Davidson ( The Night of Wenceslas ) has won three of Britain's Gold Daggers for best thriller; this shameless, wonderful, riveting entertainment should make it four. Maps. 150,000 first printing; $150,000 ad / promo .
