Customer Reviews

Davidian Report

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Steve Wintress studied the passengers on the New York to Los Angeles flight carefully. In his business, one couldn't be too careful. The pale gold girl beside him -- the niece of a prominent Hollywood director -- might be after the same Davidian Report he was looking for. So might the overwhelmingly handsome man across the way, whom he recognized as Haig Armour of the Justice Department. Or even the young and crumpled soldier who didn't look as if he would ever be mixed up in this sort of thing. Any one of them might be after the secret document -- and Steve had to get there first.

When the Communists, the FBI and the CIC are all after the same report -- which had been smuggled out of Berlin by the wily Davidian and was for sale to the highest bidder -- you can expect some fast footwork in the cloak and dagger department. With the deft touch of an expert, Dorothy Hughes unravels the tangled skein of this story of master sleuths and desperate adventure.

THE DAVIDIAN REPORT marks a departure for a Dorothy B. Hughes mystery; here quiet terror is the lesser ingredient and the suspenseful, spine-tingling spy chase offers the major thrill. Inevitably the reader will be reminded of the best Eric Ambler and Manning Coles. But perhaps no other mystery writer has Miss Hughes' unique flair for the bizarre and the incongruous; typical is the passage where two Communists try to make contact amidst the confusion of the Hollywood Santa Claus parade.

The Davidian Report by Dorothy B. Hughes, quite frankly, flunks the test of time. Written in the early days of the Cold War, this book lacks two important attributes readers of modern day spy novels have come to expect. Namely, a researched-based narrative and imaginative but believable plotting.

Instead, this very forgettable relic of the early 1950s is content to merely hitch a ride on the groundswell of Red Scare paranoia sweeping America at that time. (Or did books, plays and movies like this, in fact, fuel the paranoia fire?) The Davidian Report takes place in Los Angeles. A Los Angeles where there's a Communist operative everywhere you turn. The harmless appearing vendor selling popcorn from a pushcart is a Soviet agent, the callow youth behind the counter at the local record shop, he's a Soviet agent as well. Likewise the all American girl working in a bookstore and the middle-aged man with a slight foreign accent selling gag gifts in the magic store down the street. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

While Hughes' descriptive prose is fairly evocative, her plotting is ham-fisted and shows no evidence of her having done any research on intelligence gathering services, either foreign or domestic. The Davidian Report is of historical interest only. Not recommended as a work of literature.