Lionel Davidson, the British thriller writer, died on 21 October at 87 years old. He might be best known for Kolymsky Heights (1994) but he wrote seven other novels, including Night of Wenceslas (1961).

His last novel, “Kolymsky Heights,” involves an American agent’s quest for a secret locked in the Siberian ice. Its unusual protagonist, Johnny Porter, is a linguist, a scholar, a spy and a Gitxsan Indian from British Columbia.

Reviewing “Kolymsky Heights” in The New York Times Book Review, James Carroll called it “an icy marvel of invention,” adding: “It is written with the panache of a master and with the wide-eyed exhilaration of an adventurer in the grip of discovery. Mr. Davidson has not only rescued one of the most familiar narrative forms of the era, the spy thriller; he has also renewed it.”