The Rose of Tibet (1962)
As near as one can tell, Lionel Davidson has had a career marked by totally random spasms of success. He had a best seller several years ago (1994) with the excellent thriller Kolymsky Heights a sort of male version of Smilla's Sense of Snow. So I went back and read his earlier, much earlier, books and they were uniformly excellent. But he appears to write at a fairly stately pace, reminiscent of Thomas Harris, so the books are few and far between.
Rose of Tibet tells the story of Charles Houston, a footloose school teacher who goes to India in 1950 in search of his half brother who disappeared along with several other members of a film crew. Houston discovers that the film crew vanished into Tibet, which is facing tremendous pressure from Communist China. Houston secures a Sherpa guide & makes his own illegal entry into the forbidden country. He proceeds to get involved with ancient prophecies, religious disputes, Chinese/Tibetan political clashes and four sacks of emeralds.
Were it not for a truly ponderous narrative structure, the story is
told by a fictional Lionel Davidson who is a book editor, this would be
a thriller of the highest rank. As is, it scores a tier below Davidson's
own high standard as set in Kolymsky Heights which I highly recommend.
(Reviewed:)
Grade: (B+)
