A Long Way To Shiloh
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''A Long Way to Shiloh'' is a thriller by Lionel Davidson, published in 1966 by
Victor Gollancz Ltd Victor Gollancz Ltd () was a major British book publishing house of the twentieth century and continues to publish science fiction and fantasy titles as an imprint of Orion Publishing Group. Gollancz was founded in 1927 by Victor Gollancz, an ...
and in the US (under the title ''The Menorah Men'') by
Harper & Row Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins, based in New York City. Founded in New York in 1817 by James Harper and his brother John, the company operated as J. & J. Harper until 1833, when ...
. It was a Book Society Choice and won both the
Crime Writers' Association The Crime Writers' Association (CWA) is a specialist authors' organisation in the United Kingdom, most notable for its "Dagger" awards for the best crime writing of the year, and the Diamond Dagger awarded to an author for lifetime achievement. ...
's
Gold Dagger The CWA Gold Dagger is an award given annually by the Crime Writers' Association of the United Kingdom since 1960 for the best crime novel of the year. From 1955 to 1959, the organization named their top honor as the Crossed Red Herring Award. ...
Award and the Crime Critics' Award for Best Thriller of the Year.


Plot summary

30-year-old womaniser and drunkard Caspar Laing has just been made Professor of
Semitic Languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya language, Tigrinya, Aramaic, Hebrew language, Hebrew, Maltese language, Maltese, Modern South Arabian language ...
at Bedfordshire University - or, as he sardonically refers to it, the University of Beds. Prior to taking up his post, he is summoned to the
Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
i Embassy to confer with the visiting Professor Agrot. An ancient
parchment Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared Tanning (leather), untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves and goats. It has been used as a writing medium in West Asia and Europe for more than two millennia. By AD 400 ...
has recently been discovered that appears to report on the hiding of the Menorah, a holy candelabrum rescued from the
Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...
Temple A temple (from the Latin ) is a place of worship, a building used for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. By convention, the specially built places of worship of some religions are commonly called "temples" in Engli ...
before its destruction by the Romans. But the
Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...
ians have a better copy of the parchment, and both of these refer to the location of a third which has details of the actual hiding place of the holy artefact, dating from the time of
King Solomon King is a royal title given to a male monarch. A king is an absolute monarch if he holds unrestricted governmental power or exercises full sovereignty over a nation. Conversely, he is a constitutional monarch if his power is restrained by f ...
. According to this account it was only a copy that was taken to Rome after the sack of Jerusalem in 70 CE. The race is on, therefore, to recover the treasure before the Arabs get to it. The Jordanians have already sent scouting parties into the
Mount Tabor Mount Tabor ( ; ; ), sometimes spelled Mount Thabor, is a large hill of biblical significance in Lower Galilee, Northern District (Israel), northern Israel, at the eastern end of the Jezreel Valley, west of the Sea of Galilee. In the Hebrew Bi ...
area north of Jerusalem in search of the third parchment without success. In hope of treating their parchment with chemicals for greater legibility, Caspar visits an old colleague but is waylaid by Jordanians who try to kidnap him over the frontier. He barely manages to escape in time and hides out with the family of Shoshana, the driver of his military jeep, living in
Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...
. There Caspar begins to suspect that the report is full of coded misdirections and leaves southwards to prospect in the barren
Wilderness of Zin 250px, The Wilderness is in the south The Wilderness of Zin or the Desert of Zin (, ''Mīḏbar Ṣīn'') is a geographic term with two meanings, one biblical and one modern Israeli, which are not necessarily identical. Biblical deserts Desert ...
, where he rescues Shoshana from a
flash flood A flash flood is a rapid flooding of low-lying areas: washes, rivers, dry lakes and depressions. It may be caused by heavy rain associated with a severe thunderstorm, hurricane, or tropical storm, or by meltwater from ice and snow. Flash f ...
and eventually seduces her. Another clue alerts Caspar to the fact that not only have directions been reversed but the distances mentioned in the parchment must be halved. This narrows his search to the wilderness area behind the
Dead Sea The Dead Sea (; or ; ), also known by #Names, other names, is a landlocked salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east, the Israeli-occupied West Bank to the west and Israel to the southwest. It lies in the endorheic basin of the Jordan Rift Valle ...
, where the border between Jordan and Israel is imprecisely defined and his search takes him into the rugged terrain on the Jordanian side. No sooner has he located the crucial third parchment than he is spotted by a border patrol and taken for a narcotics smuggler. Escaping with difficulty over the Dead Sea, he reaches the
kibbutz A kibbutz ( / , ; : kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1910, was Degania Alef, Degania. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economi ...
where his friends are camped. What the searchers eventually learn is that the hiding place for the Menorah is beneath the foundations of a new hotel. The question of locating it is debated at a special rabbinic court but the verdict is against disturbing the Menorah's hiding place - not without the suspicion of indirect bribery on the part of Teitleman, the capitalist responsible for building the hotel. Caspar, the foreigner who understands the two-tongued language of the land, then returns to the safety of his academic haven.


Background

The novel was written following a visit by Davidson to Israel, to which he returned for a ten-year stay in 1968. It has been particularly commended for its descriptive treatment of the country.Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers, 2015, p. 435 However, the geographical and political situation described there was considerably changed by the
Six-Day War The Six-Day War, also known as the June War, 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab world, Arab states, primarily United Arab Republic, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan from 5 to 10June ...
of 1967. An ironical but later change was the creation of a factual University of Bedfordshire in 1993, initially based in
Luton Luton () is a town and borough in Bedfordshire, England. The borough had a population of 225,262 at the 2021 census. Luton is on the River Lea, about north-west of London. The town's foundation dates to the sixth century as a Saxon settleme ...
rather than
Bedford Bedford is a market town in Bedfordshire, England. At the 2011 Census, the population was 106,940. Bedford is the county town of Bedfordshire and seat of the Borough of Bedford local government district. Bedford was founded at a ford (crossin ...
.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Long Way To Shiloh 1966 British novels British thriller novels Novels set in Israel Victor Gollancz Ltd books Harper & Row books