Next came another wildly unique story that touched on ethic diversity and enmity in the modern Middle East, Smith’s Gazelle(1971). The Sun Chemist(1976) came next, and proved to be far less thrilling than the rest, yet put Davidson’s penchant for intricacy of detail on brilliant display-who knew that researching old journals could be so exciting? I followed this with The Night of Wenceslas, which, as an earlier work, was a bit weaker yet still entailed a cleverly original plot that kept me reading into the night. I’d visited Tibet and wanted to try out this spy-looking romance novel from 1962. I first came across Davidson when I found The Rose of Tibet in a used bookstore. Kolymsky Heights is every bit as intricate a story as the other works Davidson had produced-beginning with The Night of Wenceslasin 1960-and yet the suspense is on another level entirely. It’s not too often that an author in the trade for three decades saves his greatest novel for last, but I’ve now read five of Lionel Davidson’s eight adult-focused novels, and I think he might have done just that.
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