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nigellicus's review
5.0
Brian Garfield, perhaps best known as the author of the novel which inspired the infamous Death Wish films, seems like one of those forgotten authors now, which is a shame. As a craftsman he's up there with Westlake, Block, McBain, et al, those brilliant genre authors who never turned in a poorly written or badly constructed novel, who could take a plots or a characters apart and put them back together like a mechanic fine tuning an engine. Such books are always a pleasure to read.
Kolchak's Gold is framed as a spy thriller, but the historical investigation that makes up the bulk of it is the real heart of the novel. Harry Bristow is a historian working on a book about the destruction of the Black Sea port of Sepastopol during the Second World War. Despite many misgivings, he finds himself being directed down a side-path: the disappearance of a massive amount of gold belonging to the Russian Czar during the civil war. An interview with a dying emigre in Tel Aviv reveals the original fate of the gold. Research into archives in Russia has the potential to show him where the gold is now. Unfortunately, the KGB is almost literally looking over his shoulder, he has an old friend in the CIA and his lover may or may not be an agent of Mossad. And they all want the gold.
The book takes the form of a rather ragged manuscript delivered to Bristow's publishers, pieced together into something readable by his editors. Two sections cover the various adventures of the gold, and it is these that are the highlight of the book, combining historical notes for context and the personal account of a key witness to events. They are brilliant pieces of narrative dexterity, and I won't soon forget the account of the bullion train, fleeing the onslaught of the Reds through a refugee column of hundreds of thousands of doomed souls while the merciless winter closes in.
The cover blurb makes a big deal of comparing Kolchk's Gold to The Day Of The Jackal, but it's more like the Odessa File, really, and it certainly makes the cod-historical conspiracy thrillers of Dan Brown look like the weak sauce that they are. Garfield writes brilliantly, constructs his plots and mysteries and revelations like a demon. Don't be put off by the idea that this is just another cold war thriller. It's well worth rediscovering.
Kolchak's Gold is framed as a spy thriller, but the historical investigation that makes up the bulk of it is the real heart of the novel. Harry Bristow is a historian working on a book about the destruction of the Black Sea port of Sepastopol during the Second World War. Despite many misgivings, he finds himself being directed down a side-path: the disappearance of a massive amount of gold belonging to the Russian Czar during the civil war. An interview with a dying emigre in Tel Aviv reveals the original fate of the gold. Research into archives in Russia has the potential to show him where the gold is now. Unfortunately, the KGB is almost literally looking over his shoulder, he has an old friend in the CIA and his lover may or may not be an agent of Mossad. And they all want the gold.
The book takes the form of a rather ragged manuscript delivered to Bristow's publishers, pieced together into something readable by his editors. Two sections cover the various adventures of the gold, and it is these that are the highlight of the book, combining historical notes for context and the personal account of a key witness to events. They are brilliant pieces of narrative dexterity, and I won't soon forget the account of the bullion train, fleeing the onslaught of the Reds through a refugee column of hundreds of thousands of doomed souls while the merciless winter closes in.
The cover blurb makes a big deal of comparing Kolchk's Gold to The Day Of The Jackal, but it's more like the Odessa File, really, and it certainly makes the cod-historical conspiracy thrillers of Dan Brown look like the weak sauce that they are. Garfield writes brilliantly, constructs his plots and mysteries and revelations like a demon. Don't be put off by the idea that this is just another cold war thriller. It's well worth rediscovering.
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