The Thirty-Nine Steps

by John Buchan

Other authorsChristopher Harvie (Editor)

Paperback, 1999

Status

Available

Call number

823.912

Publication

Oxford University Press, USA (1999), Paperback, 160 pages

Description

John Buchan takes us back to Edwardian Britain on the eve of the First World War in the modern thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps. An inexplicable murder drives the innocent Richard Hannay, on the run from a manhunt that never seems to end, to hide in remote Scottish moorland. Disguise and deception are his only weapons, as he struggles to decode the clues left by the murdered man to prevent the theft of naval secrets by an unfriendly foreign power. The best-known of Buchan's thrillers, The Thirty-Nine Steps has been continuously in print since its first publication and has been filmed three times, including the brilliant 1935 version directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The Thirty-Nine Steps was also a powerful influence on the development of the detective novel, the action romance, and the spy story.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Meredy

Six-word review: Preposterous spy story furnishes lightweight diversion.

Extended review:

I'd call this very short novel a goofy romp, secret codes and murders and conspiracies and all. The wonder of it is that after a century it still has an audience. And it has.

My only prior acquaintance with this

yarn was the 1935 Hitchcock movie, which turns out not to have much in common with the novel. I recently read the author's first, Prester John, and this does have a lot in common with that, not surprisingly. In his dedication he affectionately likens it to the then-familiar American genre "the dime novel," what we would probably now call pulp fiction: sensational thrillers without much meat to them that deliver easy escapist entertainment.

Published early in the second year of the first World War, the story takes place in the months leading up to it, when suspicion, fear, and paranoia on an international scale must have been very high indeed. The hero, Richard Hannay, is a daring adventurer who takes up the challenge of a spy mission after an agent is killed in his apartment. His escapades across the English countryside are as boldly executed as they are reliant on surpassingly mad coincidence and what must be an entire pantheon of friendly, or at least highly amused, deities.

There is something of substance here, though, and it may be in part the hero's frank appetite for action, in part the sustained theme of imposture and disguise. There is also the better-than-competent prose, ensuring that despite the laughable improbabilities of plot, it remains exciting and absorbing. If you're in the right mood for it, it'll give you a few cheerful hours.

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LibraryThing member Goodwillbooks

A classic story of suspense - hard to believe it was written in 1915. It'sthe story of Richard Hannay, a somewhat dissolute young man living in London. He's bored and wishing something would happen. He's accosted one evening by a neighbor, Scudder, in the building in which he's living, who tells a

fantastic story of trying to escape pursuers who want him dead. Hannay allows him into his flat to hear his story and then to stay for a few days. One evening he comes home to find his guest stabbed to death on the floor. Realizing that the pursuers would know that they talked, and that he knows the story, he knows his own life is in danger. He escapes and runs, with the intent to hide for a month until he can go to authorities with the information he has learned. However, with the discovery of the body, he becomes the chief suspect in the murder, and is chased by both Scudder's pursuers and the police. What follows is a classic chase through the British highlands. It's pure adventure leading up to the start of World War I.

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LibraryThing member paradoxosalpha

Far and away the most printed and read of John Buchan's novels, The Thirty-Nine Steps was also made into three different films and a feature-length television adaptation, along with adaptations into other media. First published in 1915 while Buchan was working for the British War Propaganda Bureau,

it is set in England and Scotland on the eve of World War I. The protagonist Richard Hannay is informed of an alleged international conspiracy, and then must flee both the conspirators and the police, since he has been framed in the murder of his informant.

Buchan classed the story as a "shocker" and it pioneered the use of tropes that have become staples of the "thriller" and "suspense" categories in entertainment, principally that of the fugitive hero. The telling is very fast-paced, over ten chapters that I think I read in a total of four or five sittings. It keeps its narrative tension right up to the final page, with a mere three sentences of denouement.

The book has hardly any women characters, none with proper names or repeat appearances. Hannay says, "A man of my sort, who has travelled about the world in rough places, gets on perfectly well with two classes, what you may call the upper and the lower. ... But what fellows like me don't understand is the great comfortable, satisfied middle-class world, the folks that live in villas and suburbs" (97). His capacities are tied into this sort of alternating social adaptability and dysphoria. I don't doubt that many "comfortable, satisfied middle-class" readers have derived excitement over the last century from reading of Hannay's mingling with both the elite and the impoverished in this story, and that those readers have largely been men.

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LibraryThing member elliepotten

Richard Hannay is bored out of his skull in London, and about ready to head abroad again in search of a more diverting life. But lo! In the first of many amazing coincidences, his American neighbour accosts him in the hallway that very day and begs him for help. He has discovered a cunning plot to

start a war between Germany and Russia, and since he knows too much, the men in question want him dead.

A day or two later, when Hannay finds said neighbour on his smoking room floor with a knife through his heart, he realises he must run - so run he does! With the police behind him for murder, and the warmongers out to stop him hijacking their plans at any cost, the book becomes a helter-skelter race against time as Hannay fights to stay alive long enough to act on his late friend's information and stop the dastardly German plot.

There's a whole lot of running across moors and splashing through streams, improvised disguises and quick thinking, and, of course, hiding from that iconic aeroplane full of baddies. Buchan wrote that he meant this to be a "shocker' - the romance where the incidents defy the probabilities, and march just inside the borders of the possible' - and that is exactly what he delivers. It is fast and absorbing, faintly amusing and utterly absurd at times - and well worth a couple of hours of guilty-pleasure reading time!

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LibraryThing member atimco

The introduction to this slim little volume promised me that I was about to embark on a suspenseful and gripping ride. Unfortunately, whenever a book is hyped this way there is the chance that false expectations will be raised, and so it turned out. Though The Thirty-Nine Steps is known as a

classic "shocker," I was left waiting for shocks that didn't come.

It's 1914, and Richard Hannay has just returned to England after "making his pile" in Rhodesia when his apartment is invaded by a man who claims to be dead. Well, he isn't really dead, of course, but Franklin P. Scudder has found it expedient to fake his own death in order to avoid the real thing. Scudder is a freelance spy who's just caught on to something really big, and powerful people are after him. When they do catch up with the little man and make it look like Hannay committed the murder, our hero decides to carry on Scudder's mission himself. Thus begins a wild chase through the countryside as Hannay runs for his life and tries to figure out Scudder's little black book along the way.

There are a couple things that didn't work for me. First, there is the problem of the whole worldwide conspiracy. Buchan's treatment of the subject is far better than, say, Agatha Christie's in her dreadful Passenger to Frankfurt (a book I couldn't even finish). But it never felt very real to me. Second, most of the story is taken up with the dogged pursuit our narrator is attempting to escape. I gather that this is the bulk of the suspense, but somehow it just didn't grip me. Most of the ways Hannay escapes hinge on someone being willing to trade clothes with him or a fortuitous coincidence that prevents his being seen. When he does walk right into the enemy's lair and is taken prisoner, they put him in a storeroom that contain lignite (a form of dynamite), which, due to his time spent mining in Rhodesia, he knows how to use to free himself. Hannay also just happens to recognize the man who was posing as Lord Alloa, thus uncovering the government leak, and when he needs to get rid of his stolen car he accidentally but conveniently crashes it into a ravine (himself escaping unscathed).

Buchan was well aware of the crazy improbability of these events and didn't care — to him the excitement was the main thing. And a lot of readers have agreed with him. I wish I could, but I just never felt the intensity other readers ascribe to the book.

One thing Buchan does very well is the portrayal of the villains once we finally catch up to them at the very end. They are the most superb actors and understand a fine point: it is only amateurs who try to look different. Professionals look the same but are different, and so escape detection. It's an interesting theory and a bit more sophisticated than Christie's masks and such that appear in her stories of false identities.

Twice now I've compared Buchan favorably to Christie, but so far (not having read either author's entire oeuvre) I prefer Christie's work. Apparently The Thirty-Nine Steps was quite a hit with soldiers in the trenches during the first World War, and I can see why. A lone man, motivated by loyalty to his country, takes on the most powerful secret group in the world — and wins. A week after successfully preventing a major tactical leak, Hannay joins the army as a captain. He is made to order as a hero for the World War I soldier! I wish I could have enjoyed this more. Lesson learned: next time I'll skip the introduction and get right to the tale.

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LibraryThing member Stbalbach

The Thirty-Nine Steps is on many "best of" reading lists plus movie versions it lives on forever. Really though it's an artifact of 1914, when paranoia about German spies ran high and citizens found themselves thrust into the open and on the run, so to speak, in the trenches of France. It was the

perfect book for the moment as people strove to understand how the great calamity came about - invasion of England by German spies. Add in the latest technology of airplanes and secret codes etc.. it's like a 1915 version of what James Bond did for the Cold War. An important and influential book in the thriller/mystery genre it was one of the first "man on the run" thrillers which are so common now. As a story it's not aging so well but remains readable and condensed enough for a single day or two. Plus the movies are online for free.

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LibraryThing member DeltaQueen50

The Thirty-Nine Steps is an adventure story and is probably what John Buchan is most known for even though he was a well recognized historian, accepted a peerage as Lord Tweedsmuir and served as a governor-general of Canada. This short adventure thriller is famous for it’s “man-on-the-run”

action story and for the many films it has inspired.

The story opens with Richard Hannay, an Englishman who grew up in South Africa, finding his life in London rather boring and so is very open to becoming involved in uncovering an anarchist plot when he is approached by a nervous American. This American all too soon turns up dead and left in Hannay’s apartment. Now implicated in murder, Hannay decides to travel to Scotland to hide from both the British police and a very powerful German spy ring until the appropriate authorities can be advised of the situation. The story moves quickly as Hannay relies on the help of various people that he meets in the Scottish highlands and ultimately he turns the tables on the spies by helping to hunt them down.

The Thirty-Nine Steps is a very quick read and has the hero dashing around in the heather and peat bogs of the Scottish Highlands for most of the book. Set in the weeks prior to the opening of World War I, the author captures the nationalistic feelings and the political blunders that help to set up this occurrence. Although somewhat dated, I enjoyed this story.

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LibraryThing member RonWelton

My e-book with its copy of "The Thirty-Nine Steps" by John Buchan sits on top of half read "Blow Fly" by Patricia Cornwell. "Blow Fly" has sat there unopened for many months - I haven't the stomach to read any more of its monstrous violence and prurient sex. The Buchan "shocker," on the other hand,

was a pleasant afternoon read. There is much to be said for the refinement of an Edwardian novel. For example, the victim, Franklin P. Scudder, whose death incites the plot, speaks to Richard Hanney, the protagonist, in a foreshadowing of his death: "I reckon it's like going to sleep when you are pretty well tired out, and waking to find a summer day with the scent of hay coming in at the window." When Hanney finds his body with a "long knife through his heart which skewered him to the floor," he observes the dead man's face as being ..."wonderfully calm for a man who had been struck down in a moment."

As for scenes of sex, prurient or otherwise, there are none: indeed, I can remember only one female - "An old woman called Marget" who brings Hanney his meals while he is recuperating from injuries sustained while on the run from the black stone, a group of treacherous spies.

Richard Hanny is a man of action and the book is filled with fast paced scenes as he "mostly" evades his pursuers. But, though, on the run and hotly pursued he has time to observe the beauty of the countryside: "After Scotland the air smelt heavy and flat, but infinitely sweet, for the limes and chestnuts and lilac bushes were domes of blossom." And "The air had the queer, rooty smell of bogs, but it was as fresh as mid-ocean, and it had the strangest effect on my spirits. I actually felt light-hearted. i might have been a boy out for a spring holiday tramp, instead of a man of thirty-seven very much wanted by the police. I felt just as I used to feel when I was starting for a big trek on a frosty morning on the high veld."

The one hundred years of writing that follows does bring more to the writing of "shockers" than graphic violence and detailed sex scenes - there is a complexity of mystery to be unraveled and a more exacting verisimilitude of cause and event than the reader finds in the Edwardian book, but that is a desirable attribute that I am willing to sacrifice right now for the comfort of the imaginative pre-world-war-I world.

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LibraryThing member wdwilson3

Hitchcock's "39 Steps" is one of my favorite old movies. That it sprung from this preposterous book impresses me even more. The similarities are limited to the title, the protagonist's name, and the first few chapters. After that, believe it or not, the movies is far more plausible.

LibraryThing member souloftherose

According to the dedication, John Buchan wrote this book whilst ill one winter when he had exhausted his supply of what he described as 'shocker' novels - 'the romance where the incidents defy the probabilities and march just inside the borders of the possible'. As a result he decided to write a

'shocker' novel himself and the result is one of the finest thriller/spy stories I've read.

Published in 1915 the outlook of the colonial Richard Hannay can seem quaint and somewhat dated (and occasionally a little racist) but despite this The Thirty Nine Steps runs rings around most modern novels in this genre.

Highly recommended.

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LibraryThing member cbl_tn

Even though I've always enjoyed espionage novels, for some reason I had never read Buchan's classic. I had only experienced it through the Hitchcock movie. With a new version airing on PBS's Masterpiece in a couple of weeks, I decided to do what I should have done a long time ago: read the book.

Even though I had recently seen the Hitchcock version on TV, the movie plot had been altered enough that it didn't serve as a spoiler for the action in the book. I didn't have any more idea of what was coming next than the first person narrator did. If anything, I probably felt more dread than the narrator did. As the action started in May of 1914, he only feared what might happen given the current state of world affairs. I knew what happened just weeks later in the summer of 1914 that launched the world into a Great War. Buchan doesn't waste a lot of words in telling this story, so reading it doesn't involve a huge time commitment. I would encourage all mystery, thriller, and espionage fans to read this classic of the genre.

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LibraryThing member AnnieMod

I am not sure why it took me so long to get around to reading Buchan - I had always known about his novels and they had always been somewhere on my TBR list but somehow I never got to them. I guess it was time to rectify that.

Meet Richard Hannay - 37 years old, just back from Rhodesia (and now

technically retired) and really bored. After all the excitement in South Africa, London and Britain are boring in the spring of 1914 (working out the year is not hard once you read the novel because the reference to the impeding and starting war is there but it is also as easy to figure it out in the first chapter when Hannay mentions the Balkan Wars and we know it is May - it cannot be 1913 because they are still raging and it cannot be 1915 because WWI had not started yet).

Hannay is ready to catch a train to somewhere, anywhere if nothing happens... and then something does happen - a guy he had never met before confides in him about a huge conspiracy involving the powerful men of the day and within days, the guy is dead in Hannay's flat. The story is so outlandish that our hero is not sure how much to believe of it... but after the murder, he decides that the story must have merit and goes on a run in Scotland. Of course he manages to do it in a way that makes sure that he is blamed for the murder and our bored man is not on the run from both the police and the murderers.

And somewhere along the way, it turns out that the conspiracy is not just real but that it is a lot more complicated than he thought. During his run Hannay meets all kind of different people - from a road worker to a politician wannabe to an old acquaintance; he manages to stumble right into the spies house (because the conspiracy involves foreign spies)- of course he does, there is no reason not to. Add to this a plane, a big explosion and Scotland Yard not just believing him but helping him at the end and the story is complete.

It is a spy story from the times before every spy had to have a beautiful woman on his arm; before the time when a woman was mandatory for a novel and especially a spy novel. It is called one of the first novels with a man on a run and it is - the description of the run and the places where he goes through are done very well and make you want to read more.

Buchan himself compares the novel to the dime novels so popular in the States at the time. And it really is very similar in tone to those pulp novels. But it is also very British in the way that only authors from the empire can make it. And despite its brevity, it makes you want to read about Hannay more - at least to see what else happens to him when he is bored... and what happens when he is not.

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LibraryThing member revslick

This is the classic that started the 'man-on-the-run' action thrillers. It's also the one everybody has tried to live up to since. Classic, espionage, thriller - don't put it down otherwise you might have to backtrack. You don't follow this one - you just hang on for the ride.

LibraryThing member nmhale

This adventure story is probably best known for its various movie adaptations, including Hitchcock's famous version. However, the story is significantly different. The main character has a different background and characterization, and the adventure is very focused on a rugged escapade in nature

and matching wits against criminals.

In essence, the story is about a young English Riched Hannay who is finding life in England unbearably stifling after his South African residence. This ennui is eradicated when a man living in a different floor in his building and asks for help. The American man reveals that he has stumbled upon an intricate plot to destabilize European government and power structure, starting with an attack against the British government. The man learned about a group of German spies called the Black Stone and he has been working on uncovering and thwarting them. He even faked his own death to throw his enemies off track. He has recently seen a dangerous adversary in town, however, and fears that he may be killed before he finishes his mission. He shows Richard his notebook full of encrypted clues, and asks for the favor of staying in Richard's flat for a few days.

Richard thinks the man is a bit mad, but he allows him to stay with him.

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LibraryThing member soylentgreen23

The accent - it's a problem. I've never gotten used to think accents, regardless of their origin - be they Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Brum, anywhere - and here Buchan decides, when he sends his hero scurrying up north to escape the police, to present all of the dialogue as close to the dialect as

possible. It's hard work, as a result.

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LibraryThing member Eyejaybee

This is one of THE great adventure stories! I first read it about forty years ago and I have reread it numerous times since.

John Buchan seems to epitomise the great Victorian work ethic - now best known as a writer of cracking adventure stories featuring upright, "decent" heroes, he was a prolific

worker. In addition to his thirty novels and various volumes of short stories, he also produced a multi-volume history of India and biographies of Sir Walter Scott and the Earl of Montrose. Writing was, however, really only his second career. His primary vocation was the law, and he built up an extensive practice as a tax barrister. From the Bar, like his fictional avatar Sir Edward Leithen, he progressed into politics (as a Unionist though one espousing both free trade and women's suffrage), eventually entering Parliament on the Unionist ticket in 1927. He was subsequently appointed Governor-General of Canada shortly after his elevation to the House of Lords as Baron Tweedsmuir. Where did he find the time?

While the plots and subject matter of his novels have recently fallen prey to satire for their idealised evocation of a Corinthian age that probably never really existed, his prose is always beautifully constructed and flows with inner cadences. This short novel introduces Richard Hannay, recently returned to Britain from Rhodesia where he has secured his fortune as a mining engineer. Bored out of his skull by the trivial interests of the other members of his social circle he is on the brink of returning to South Africa when he encounters Franklin Scudder, a frightened man with a scary secret.

Scudder starts to give Hannay all sorts of frightening insights to the prevailing European political situation and the inevitability of war against an over-powerful Germany, the catalyst for which will be the imminent assassination of Karolides, the last hope for sustained stability in the Balkans. However, Scudder himself is murdered and Hannay is put in the frame as his killer. He decides to flee to South West Scotland where he hopes to be able to lie low until he can muster sufficient evidence of the plot against Karolides.

Buchan is always at his finest when describing Scottish landscapes, and the Galloway wilderness almost becomes a character in its own right. Hannay is hunted relentlessly through the varied Galloway terrain, both by the police and by pursuers of an altogether more deadly provenance.

What has always amazed me most about "the Thirty Nine Steps" is the recurrent failure of film makers to bring it to the screen with any success, given that its plot-driven nature would seem to lend itself so readily to cinematic treatment. Hitchcock completely eviscerated the plot in his 1935 film, introducing a bizarre music-hall scene which was retained in the 1959 version directed by Ralph Thomas and starring Kenneth More. Meanwhile the 1970s version had Robert Powell hanging off the hands of Big Ben. Even the recent BBC version, though truer to the book than all of the others, felt the need to introduce a spurious romance element. Certainly Buchan did not do female characters well, a failing that he acknowledged - I don't think there is a single line of dialogue delivered by a woman in the whole novel.

It would also be easy to pick holes in the plot. [CAUTION - possible spoilers] There is, for example, an overwhelming dependence upon bizarre coincidence; while fleeing in a stolen car Hannay has a crash with someone whose godfather happens to be Permanent Secretary at the Home Office; fleeing from his pursuers he takes refuge in a private house only to find that it is owned by the leader of the pack from whom he is trying to escape; at one point he is locked in a storeroom only to find that it is full of explosives and fuses; and coming upon a solitary driver in the wilds of Galloway it turns out to be someone whom he knew from London, even though we have previously been told of the paucity of his social life during his brief stint in the capital.

Does any of this matter? Absolutely not! The story was written as a gripping adventure story, and it still succeeds in holding the reader's (and re-reader's) attention. One hundred years since its first publication it still works perfectly well.

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LibraryThing member cwflatt

fun clean tale of adventure.

LibraryThing member justabookreader

Sometimes, I like to go old school with my books. This book was one of those occasions. I should start off by telling you that The Thirty-Nine Steps is a serial story that appeared in a magazine in and around 1915 or so. I found it interesting for that reason; the fact that it was an old school spy

thriller took it over the top though. However, there’s a reason for my telling you this up-front but the valuable lesson learned will be shared in a moment.

Richard Hannay is an ordinary man trying to settle into his London home after years away in South Africa when a neighbor, Franklin Scudder, corners him and tells him that he’s uncovered a German plot to assassinate a Greek Premier and he needs help hiding out. Soon after agreeing to hide Scudder, Hannay comes home to find him dead. From then on, Hannay is running from everyone. He can’t go to the police, he doesn’t know who is really chasing him, and he doesn’t know if any of it is real or not. Running is his one and only option.

Lesson learned: if you are going to read a serialized story, read it that way. Each chapter is a complete story, in a way. There’s a distinct beginning, middle, and end. Yes, you can say that of most novels but it’s especially true in this case since each chapter was run by itself it needed to reintroduce the characters and story in subtle ways. When I tried to read this book all in one sitting, it didn’t work. I started to wonder if I would even finish it because it wasn’t working for me. So, I started and ended each chapter at lunch. And it clicked! The book started working and I was in love with it. It became exciting to see how Hannay was going to get out of his predicament and who he would meet up with next. It was my lunch reading and I couldn’t wait for it.

It’s a man on the run thriller, one the first of its kind from what I remember reading about this story. The story itself is a great distraction too. I got caught up and was happy to see things work out in some cases or be left wondering about the next set up.

Warning: if you’re going to read this, go one chapter at a time and let the story play out. It’s so much better that way. And try it you should.

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LibraryThing member ponsonby

Difficult to know what to say about this book, one of the first espionage 'thrillers'. As often observed it does contain a few racist lines (against Jewish people) but no more so than many other books of 19th and early 20th century period (cf Trollope). Its main flaws are (1) the unlikelihood of

the chase situation which is set up (if you really wanted to disappear after a murder would you really go off to a lonely country area where you stick out like a sore thumb?) (2) the claim that the police would be on his track so efficiently when they would have no idea where he had gone, and (3) the schoolboy explanations of politics, national interest etc. Particularly funny is that the book envisages as a main plot driver that Britain would have shared its naval dispositions with France before WWI, as it actually did its army planning. Having read the book I can see why the various film versions have been based on substantial adaptations to the original plot. Worth reading if you have seen one of those adapatations, but probably not otherwise.

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LibraryThing member ursula

After a brief introduction to our main character, Richard Hannay, who is living in London but considering returning to South Africa due to boredom, we are thrust immediately into the plot by the arrival of a strange man with an even stranger tale. The man, Scudder, tells Hannay about a political

plot that is underway and which he is trying to thwart. Scudder has faked his own death to escape his pursuers, who are going to commit a political assassination. Hannay is fascinated with the story, which he believes in spite of its outlandishness because he assesses the man as an honest one. Shortly, Scudder is killed, and Hannay takes up his mission. He is pursued across the UK by the police as well as by the bad guys as he tries to prevent the war from coming to pass.

I was unsurprised that Hitchcock was drawn to make a movie out of this one (although I hear that the movie bears little resemblance to the book - I haven't seen it yet). It reminds me a lot of North by Northwest, with the story being based on relentless pursuit of someone who is innocent. The book definitely succeeds at creating an atmosphere of complete paranoia. I usually just read along at face value, but I was seeing spies and counterspies, plots and potential double-crosses everywhere. It's a short book, full of narrow escapes and cunning disguises, and it moves quickly. If you're looking for complete plausibility, it probably won't appeal to you, but one can see all the earmarks of future spy novels touched on here.

Recommended for: Bond aficionados, people who enjoy Germans as villains, Tarantino fans, people who have always wanted to read detailed descriptions of the Scottish countryside.

Quote: "'By God!' he whispered, drawing his breath in sharply, 'it is all pure Rider Haggard and Conan Doyle.'"

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LibraryThing member BooksForDinner

Enjoyed this a lot. The old style adventure/chase/thriller kind of book where the protagonist is helped by an endless parade of lucky breaks is always fun; reading one written by A writer like John Buchan makes it much more so.

LibraryThing member shrubbery

Incredibly dated and laughably bad.

LibraryThing member CharlotteN

** spoiler alert **

If you like spy stories and political thrillers, this is the grandaddy of them all! Set in the lead-up to World War One, it chronicles the adventures of Richard Hannay in his quest to defend Britain's state secrets against German spies. Having been written in 1915, this was

obviously a very topical subject at the time and the narrative is, understandably, anti-Germanic to a point that modern readers may have trouble identifying with. This goes also for hinted viewpoints on Jews and imperialism w...moreIf you like spy stories and political thrillers, this is the grandaddy of them all! Set in the lead-up to World War One, it chronicles the adventures of Richard Hannay in his quest to defend Britain's state secrets against German spies. Having been written in 1915, this was obviously a very topical subject at the time and the narrative is, understandably, anti-Germanic to a point that modern readers may have trouble identifying with. This goes also for hinted viewpoints on Jews and imperialism which sit unconfortably in the 21st century. However, don't let this take away from the books merits, of which there are many. It is certainly thrilling and very exciting, though it is not without its flaws.

Firstly, much of the plot depends on some quite unlikely coincidences; for example, out of anywhere where Hannay could have chosen to hide as a fugitive, he picks the place where his enemies have their headquarters. Not only that but he quite by chance runs into someone who happens to be the godson of a high-ranking civil servant who is exactly the person Hannay needs to be in contact with. This must be why film adaptations often deviate quite significantly from the book. Also, the ending is a bit of an anti-climax.

All in all though, this is worth reading and I would recommend it.

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LibraryThing member bookworm12

Richard Hannay is a young, single man who has grown bored with life in London in 1914. But just when things seem slow, a man is murdered in Hannay’s flat and he finds himself in the midst of a conspiracy. He realizes he has some top secret information and his life is at risk, so he goes on the

run.

I love the bits about Hannay escaping on trains, you just can't do that in the states because we have so few passenger trains. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see a train about to leave the station, run for it and at the last second leap aboard, loosing your pursuers in the process. That wouldn’t exactly work at an airport.

Hannay meets some great characters while evading both the bad guys and the police, who want to question him about the murder that happened in his flat. It’s a fun adventure story, though I don’t think the details with stick with me. I would like to check out Hitchcock’s movie version.

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LibraryThing member bzedan

This is a classic, I think? I can see why. Average dude, who's luckily good at rolling with the death-punches, caught up in mystery! OMiG, state of England at stake!

Fewer