The Thirty-Nine Steps

By John Buchan

Considered by many to be one of the greatest adventure novels of all time, “The Thirty-Nine Steps” is Scottish author John Buchan’s most successful work. Published in 1915 and set during the early days of the First World War, it is the first of Buchan’s stories of Richard Hannay, a brave and honorable yet unremarkable gentleman, who finds himself mixed up in extraordinary circumstances. In “The Thirty-Nine Steps” Hannay is unintentionally drawn into a deadly plot to undermine the British war effort and assassinate the Greek Premier. Framed for murder and now a fugitive from the law, Hannay must race against time to try to stay one step ahead of his deadly pursuers and do what he can to stop the plot. Thrust into a world of spies, intrigue, and danger, the ordinary Hannay rises to the occasion and becomes a resourceful and loyal hero. Thrilling, intelligent, and clever, “The Thirty-Nine Steps” was popular and widely influential when first published and is credited with being one of the first “man on the run” stories. This classic is an exciting adventure of mystery and espionage that will thrill and delight readers both young and old. This edition includes a biographical afterword.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digireads.com Publishing
• Release date: Feb 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9781420959864

John Buchan

John Buchan was a Scottish diplomat, barrister, journalist, historian, poet and novelist. He published nearly 30 novels and seven collections of short stories. He was born in Perth, an eldest son, and studied at Glasgow and Oxford. In 1901 he became a barrister of the Middle Temple and a private secretary to the High Commissioner for South Africa. In 1907 he married Susan Charlotte Grosvenor and they subsequently had four children. After spells as a war correspondent, Lloyd George's Director of Information and Conservative MP, Buchan moved to Canada in 1935. He served as Governor General there until his death in 1940. Hew Strachan is Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford; his research interests include military history from the 18th century to date, including contemporary strategic studies, but with particular interest in the First World War and in the history of the British Army.

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THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

By JOHN BUCHAN

The Thirty-Nine Steps

By John Buchan

Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-6081-5

eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5986-4

This edition copyright © 2018. Digireads.com Publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Cover Image: a detail of the cover of the first edition of The Thirty-Nine Steps, published by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh, 1915.

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CONTENTS

Chapter One. The Man Who Died

Chapter Two. The Milkman Sets Out on His Travels

Chapter Three. The Adventure of the Literary Innkeeper

Chapter Four. The Adventure of the Radical Candidate

Chapter Five. The Adventure of the Spectacled Roadman

Chapter Six. The Adventure of the Bald Archaeologist

Chapter Seven. The Dry-Fly Fisherman

Chapter Eight. The Coming of the Black Stone

Chapter Nine. The Thirty-Nine Steps

Chapter Ten. Various Parties Converging on the Sea

Autobiographical Afterword

Chapter One. The Man Who Died

I returned from the City about three o’clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life. I had been three months in the Old Country, and was fed up with it. If anyone had told me a year ago that I would have been feeling like that I should have laughed at him; but there was the fact. The weather made me liverish, the talk of the ordinary Englishman made me sick, I couldn’t get enough exercise, and the amusements of London seemed as flat as soda-water that has been standing in the sun. ‘Richard Hannay,’ I kept telling myself, ‘you have got into the wrong ditch, my friend, and you had better climb out.’

It made me bite my lips to think of the plans I had been building up those last years in Bulawayo. I had got my pile—not one of the big ones, but good enough for me; and I had figured out all kinds of ways of enjoying myself. My father had brought me out from Scotland at the age of six, and I had never been home since; so England was a sort of Arabian Nights to me, and I counted on stopping there for the rest of my days.

But from the first I was disappointed with it. In about a week I was tired of seeing sights, and in less than a month I had had enough of restaurants and theatres and race-meetings. I had no real pal to go about with, which probably explains things. Plenty of people invited me to their houses, but they didn’t seem much interested in me. They would fling me a question or two about South Africa, and then get on their own affairs. A lot of Imperialist ladies asked me to tea to meet schoolmasters from New Zealand and editors from Vancouver, and that was the dismalest business of all. Here was I, thirty-seven years old, sound in wind and limb, with enough money to have a good time, yawning my head off all day. I had just about settled to clear out and get back to the veld, for I was the best bored man in the United Kingdom.

That afternoon I had been worrying my brokers about investments to give my mind something to work on, and on my way home I turned into my club—rather a pot-house, which took in Colonial members. I had a long drink, and read the evening papers. They were full of the row in the Near East, and there was an article about Karolides, the Greek Premier. I rather fancied the chap. From all accounts he seemed the one big man in the show; and he played a straight game too, which was more than could be said for most of them. I gathered that they hated him pretty blackly in Berlin and Vienna, but that we were going to stick by him, and one paper said that he was the only barrier between Europe and Armageddon. I remember wondering if I could get a job in those parts. It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawning.

About six o’clock I went home, dressed, dined at the Cafe Royal, and turned into a music-hall. It was a silly show, all capering women and monkey-faced men, and I did not stay long. The night was fine and clear as I walked back to the flat I had hired near Portland Place. The crowd surged past me on the pavements, busy and chattering, and I envied the people for having something to do. These shop-girls and clerks and dandies and policemen had some interest in life that kept them going. I gave half-a-crown to a beggar because I saw him yawn; he was a fellow-sufferer. At Oxford Circus I looked up into the spring sky and I made a vow. I would give the Old Country another day to fit me into something; if nothing happened, I would take the next boat for the Cape.

My flat was the first floor in a new block behind Langham Place. There was a common staircase, with a porter and a liftman at the entrance, but there was no restaurant or anything of that sort, and each flat was quite shut off from the others. I hate servants on the premises, so I had a fellow to look after me who came in by the day. He arrived before eight o’clock every morning and used to depart at seven, for I never dined at home.

I was just fitting my key into the door when I noticed a man at my elbow. I had not seen him approach, and the sudden appearance made me start. He was a slim man, with a short brown beard and small, gimlety blue eyes. I recognized him as the occupant of a flat on the top floor, with whom I had passed the time of day on the stairs.

‘Can I speak to you?’ he said. ‘May I come in for a minute?’ He was steadying his voice with an effort, and his hand was pawing my arm.

I got my door open and motioned him in. No sooner was he over the threshold than he made a dash for my back room, where I used to smoke and write my letters. Then he bolted back.

‘Is the door locked?’ he asked feverishly, and he fastened the chain with his own hand.

‘I’m very sorry,’ he said humbly. ‘It’s a mighty liberty, but you looked the kind of man who would understand. I’ve had you in my mind all this week when things got troublesome. Say, will you do me a good turn?’

‘I’ll listen to you,’ I said. ‘That’s all I’ll promise.’ I was getting worried by the antics of this nervous little chap.

There was a tray of drinks on a table beside him, from which he filled himself a stiff whisky-and-soda. He drank it off in three gulps, and cracked the glass as he set it down.

‘Pardon,’ he said, ‘I’m a bit rattled tonight. You see, I happen at this moment to be dead.’

I sat down in an armchair and lit my pipe.

‘What does it feel like?’ I asked. I was pretty certain that I had to deal with a madman.

A smile flickered over his drawn face. ‘I’m not mad—yet. Say, Sir, I’ve been watching you, and I reckon you’re a cool customer. I reckon, too, you’re an honest man, and not afraid of playing a bold hand. I’m going to confide in you. I need help worse than any man ever needed it, and I want to know if I can count you in.’

‘Get on with your yarn,’ I said, ‘and I’ll tell you.’

He seemed to brace himself for a great effort, and then started on the queerest rigmarole. I didn’t get hold of it at first, and I had to stop and ask him questions. But here is the gist of it:

He was an American, from Kentucky, and after college, being pretty well off, he had started out to see the world. He wrote a bit, and acted as war correspondent for a Chicago paper, and spent a year or two in South-Eastern Europe. I gathered that he was a fine linguist, and had got to know pretty well the society in those parts. He spoke familiarly of many names that I remembered to have seen in the newspapers.

He had played about with politics, he told me, at first for the interest of them, and then because he couldn’t help himself. I read him as a sharp, restless fellow, who always wanted to get down to the roots of things. He got a little further down than he wanted.

I am giving you what he told me as well as I could make it out. Away behind all the Governments and the armies there was a big subterranean movement going on, engineered by very dangerous people. He had come on it by accident; it fascinated him; he went further, and then he got caught. I gathered that most of the people in it were the sort of educated anarchists that make revolutions, but that beside them there were financiers who were playing for money. A clever man can make big profits on a falling market, and it suited the book of both classes to set Europe by the ears.

He told me some queer things that explained a lot that had puzzled me—things that happened in the Balkan War, how one state suddenly came out on top, why alliances were made and broken, why certain men disappeared, and where the sinews of war came from. The aim of the whole conspiracy was to get Russia and Germany at loggerheads.

When I asked why, he said that the anarchist lot thought it would give them their chance. Everything would be in the melting-pot, and they looked to see a new world emerge. The capitalists would rake in the shekels, and make fortunes by buying up wreckage. Capital, he said, had no conscience and no fatherland. Besides, the Jew was behind it, and the Jew hated Russia worse than hell.

‘Do you wonder?’ he cried. ‘For three hundred years they have been persecuted, and this is the return match for the pogroms. The Jew is everywhere, but you have to go far down the backstairs to find him. Take any big Teutonic business concern. If you have dealings with it the first man you meet is Prince von und zu Something, an elegant young man who talks Eton-and-Harrow English. But he cuts no ice. If your business is big, you get behind him and find a prognathous Westphalian with a retreating brow and the manners of a hog. He is the German business man that gives your English papers the shakes. But if you’re on the biggest kind of job and are bound to get to the real boss, ten to one you are brought up against a little white-faced Jew in a bath-chair with an eye like a rattlesnake. Yes, Sir, he is the man who is ruling the world just now, and he has his knife in the Empire of the Tzar, because his aunt was outraged and his father flogged in some one-horse location on the Volga.’

I could not help saying that his Jew-anarchists seemed to have got left behind a little.

‘Yes and no,’ he said. ‘They won up to a point, but they struck a bigger thing than money, a thing that couldn’t be bought, the old elemental fighting instincts of man. If you’re going to be killed you invent some kind of flag and country to fight for, and if you survive you get to love the thing. Those foolish devils of soldiers have found something they care for, and that has upset the pretty plan laid in Berlin and Vienna. But my friends haven’t played their last card by a long sight. They’ve gotten the ace up their sleeves, and unless I can keep alive for a month they are going to play it and win.’

‘But I thought you were dead,’ I put in.

‘Mors janua vitae,’ he smiled. (I recognized the quotation: it was about all the Latin I knew.) ‘I’m coming to that, but I’ve got to put you wise about a lot of things first. If you read your newspaper, I guess you know the name of Constantine Karolides?’

I sat up at that, for I had been reading about him that very afternoon.

‘He

Reviews for The Thirty-Nine Steps

[mkfs-354306 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An enjoyable yarn about a man on the run.

While this could easily have been a dated pre-War thriller, its self-consciousness ("I say sir, the story you tell sounds like one of those Haggard novels!") endears it to the modern reader.

[john5918 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not only is it a classic and a great thriller, but it also features a lot of action on a train. What more could one want?

[joeld-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I came across this book on The Classic Tales Podcast and listened to it that way. It's basically an enjoyable old spy thriller, not too long and with a straightforward, linear plot. The premise is sound and plausible, and the protagonist is well-sketched.

[lisamorr · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Bored Richard Hannay has already had enough of London, after returning from a life abroad. But then a neighbor drops by and Richard's life becomes very exciting, very fast. The coincidences are unbelievable at times in this espionage thriller as Richard becomes embroiled in trying to stop a secret plot to undermine the British war effort as Europe marches towards WW1. Still it was a fun ride as Richard races across Scotland by train, car and on foot as he tries to shake his pursuers and expose the plot.

[encephalical · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I commend Keegan's introduction to the Penguin Classics edition for not only not containing any spoliers, but for calling out those which do.

[thornton37814 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It’s 1914, and World War I is eminent. Richard Hannay (a Scot) sets up house in London, having returned from Rhodesia. He meets a fearful American spy named Franklin P. Scudder who believes a plot is afoot to assassinate the Greek premier when he visits London. Scudder claims to be following a German spy ring. He allows him to stay with him. Soon two deaths, including Scudder’s occur in the building. Hannay worries he will be next for the assassins, but he must investigate himself, since he is the chief suspect. Hannay pores over Scudder’s notes, once he has broken the cipher. They mention “39 steps.” After being introduced to the Foreign Office by a local aspiring politician, his heroic actions prevent England from divulging secrets to the Germans. I listened to an audio version taken from the Golden Age of Radio with an introduction by Orson Wells and performed by a theatrical company. One had to listen quite carefully over the crackles to hear the soft voices of the actors. The recording quality is quite bad, and I recommend that persons wanting to listen to this one do so sitting in their living room as the original radio broadcasts were heard.

[haloedrain · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I was expecting more of a thriller, but after a while I stopped worrying about Hannay because the author keeps throwing him exactly what he needs, no matter how improbable.

[julesjones_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Written in 1915 and definitely of its time regarding social attitudes, but enormous fun.

[carltonc_5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Two short novels in this Folio edition.The Thirty-Nine Steps was as exciting as when read last time, although as I have seen the 1978 Robert Powell film version many times in between with my family, coming back to the original story was somewhat different, especially the character of Scudder at the start. An enjoyable old-fashioned adventure yarn that might have far too many coincidences, but still rattles along at a lovely pace.The second novel, The Power-House, was first published in 1913 and has Edward Leithen as the main character, a barrister early on in his career in this first book. Although this novel is a thriller, the next in the Edward Leithen series, the excellent John MacNab, is much more a hunting, shooting, fishing book.Both novels are understandably dated, but they give an interesting view into upper class (or upper-middle class) English society at the beginning of the twentieth century, as well as being rattling good reads.

[ken1952 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Rather tame spy adventure. But without it there would have been no highly entertaining Alfred Hitchcock version. And without that there would have been no extraordinary stage version. It's a man-on-the-run tale that made me happy our hero was in shape.

[cwflatt · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

fun clean tale of adventure.

[booksfordinner · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[shrubbery_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Incredibly dated and laughably bad.

[pilgrimjess · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is yet another book that I find rather hard to write a review for and again it is mainly because I am of an age where I remember watching the film. I distinctly remember watching this movie at school and I guess that is the real problem, the book not only shows it's age but mine too.For those who do not know the plot, the book is told in the first person by Richard Hannay an ex-pat who has recently returned to the old ancestral homeland with a fair amount of money but with no friends or other ties and his is bored rigid. Then a neighbour is killed in his flat and the finds himself thrust into a spy mystery persued not only by the baddies but the police also.The book written nearly 100 years ago and is set in the run up to WW1. This book is important because it was one of the first real spy stories and as such marks a shift in literary trends but also touches on the prevailing class differences of the time. Hannay was a mine-engineer in Rhodesia, so reasonably working class, but has made some money abroad and now finds himself rubbing shoulders with the upper classes.With a long line of mis-adventures and disguise changes along the way ala Jason Bourne in the Bourne series but as this barely 100 pages long so there is little fleshing out of the various characters within. On the whole the book felt rather insubstantial and the ending a little rushed but you can certainly see why it has stood the test of time. A book of it's time hence 3 stars but perhaps it would have been better if I could get the image of Robert Powell racing across the country out of my mind

[justabookreader · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[davros410 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting adaptation, although I don't understand why it was updated to being set in 1950 rather than just before World War I. Was this when it was first adapted by Classics Illustrated?It's not as good as the original novel, but is a good taster.

[maggiecraig_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Re-read this classic tale of adventure and derring-do a few months ago. Still think it's a terrific yarn in its depiction of one man being hunted through the moors and hills of Galloway in south-west Scotland, pursued by the agents of a foreign power. We're building up to World War I, and tensions in Europe are rising.There's the occasional throwaway remark illustrating the casual prejudices of the time which can bring the modern reader up short but there's much to admire too, particularly the terrific sense of place and the great characterisation.

[wildbill_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very entertaining Sunday morning read. I read this once before long ago but I kept getting the ending mixed up with the movie version. A pre-WW I suspense espionage that introduced the character Richard Hannay. The story involves someone getting caught up in an espionage plot somewhat like Eric Ambler's stories. The difference is that here there is a definite good guy and bad guy and the good guy wins. The book is well written and I recommend it as an entertaining story.

[ursula_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.'"

[revslick_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[daptolibrary · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

We rarely fail to please with our classics. As a group we can see the merit in most of these literary gems, even if it does not fall into our preferred genre. The 39 Steps was seen for what it was; a boy’s own adventure with quick, punchy episodes written to entertain. The hero, Richard Hannay, delighted us as he skipped his way through the country side as a more than competent espionage agent dodging enemies and much of the humour was not lost to us.On a more serious note, we found the descriptive passages, particularly of the Scottish landscape beautifully written and believe Steps to be a book of its time that ticked many of boxes for an engaging adventure novel in 1915.A few of us were not quite so impressed, finding the writing a little amateurish with too many coincidences and an unbelievable story line. Old-fashioned it may be, but as a forerunner to the modern day adventure espionage novel, you are not likely toget anything better.

[sueincyprus · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The book, as is stated at the beginning, was deliberately written as an implausible adventure story where the hero keeps on escaping by the skin of his teeth, rather like the comic strip stories that appeared in weekly magazines. It's set in the year 1914.

Richard Hannay is the protagonist, a wealthy engineer who has been living in London for a while but is bored with the lifestyle. Then, as he’s about to give up his flat and leave, a stranger arrives on his doorstep with a worrying story about international politics and intrigue…

Over the next few weeks, Hannay's life is far from mundane. He flees to Scotland, and takes refuge with a series of unlikely people. He dons many disguises, and, in teenage adventure story style, escapes each scenario by cleverness or luck, before finally returning to London. The story is told in the first person, so it's not a spoiler to say that he escapes.

Inevitably most of the other people in the story are caricatured like comic strip stereotypes. But the writing is good, albeit a bit dated, but that's hardly surprising. It's fast-paced and exciting, with just enough description to set each scene. In many places there is politically incorrect commentary, but that’s par for the course with this era and style of writing.

‘The Thirty-Nine Steps’ is just over 100 pages long so I read it in a few hours. The ending is rather abrupt; but the final paragraph slots extremely well into the realities of world history.

This isn’t a thriller in the modern sense of the word, but it’s one of the earliest of the genre, now considered a classic, and may have inspired subsequent novels on similar themes. It has to be taken with a very large pinch of salt, but still, I would recommend it to anyone, teen or adult, who is interested in literature from this era.

[dbsovereign · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The classic later filmed by Alfred Hitchcock, this book is an adventure/romance whose hero/narrator exposes a spy ring and saves Britain from an invasion.

[eadieb-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed this book very much. It was a very good, fast read with classic, historical importance. It held my interest from start to finish. If you like spy mysteries, then I would highly recommend this book.

[michael8xolotl · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

2.75 stars. Contrived and repetitious but fairly entertaining in places. The play's better. ;)

[carl_alves_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Thirty-Nine Steps was written and is set in World War 1 era Europe, where conspiracies of worldwide war are at work. The story’s main character, Richard Hannay is leading a typical middle class life when he gets thrust in the middle of it all as a stranger shows up telling him of this conspiracy. When the stranger winds up dead, Richard takes it upon himself to bring the killers to justice and prevent the war from happening.This novel is part thriller, part spy novel. In comparison to other novels from that era, this is written at a fairly fast pace. Although conspiratorial in nature, it was interesting how many of the things written in the book came to pass and how true to life the novel was. Buchan shows a high skill-level in his writing. Richard Hanney is a bit of an everyman—someone who gets thrust into a crazy situation and rises to the occasion. My only real complaint is that the villains in the story weren’t terribly well-developed and their motives seemed a bit shaky. The final confrontation made me feel a bit ambivalent. This was a good read. I’m generally not into fiction written over a century ago, but I think this novel works.Carl Alves – author of Two For Eternity

[dorritt_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Wow! This lovely, compact spy tale could well be the ur-text for all spy tales that have followed! It has everything – international conspiracy, adventure, villains, secret codes, disguise, foot/car/airplane chases, mistaken identity … even the requisite innocent outsider drawn into situation beyond their control. All stripped of unnecessary garnish and delivered at a breathtakingly brisk clip – so brisk that, by the end of the second chapter, our resourceful everyman protagonist, Richard Hanney, is already on the run from seemingly omnipotent villains intent upon killing him before he can reveal what he knows. When it comes to courage and resourcefulness, Jason Bourne has nothing on Hanney, but Ludlum could have learned a thing or two about pacing from John Buchan, the author of this suspenseful tale. Seriously, when was the last time you read a novel that was only 112 pages long? Nor should you be scared off by the novel’s 1915 publication date … believe me, this reads as briskly as a James Patterson and the international conspiracy at the core of the tale is as relevant today as it was back at the turn of the century. A terrific tale, well told … what more could you ask for?

[hardlyhardy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"The trouble about him was that he was too romantic. He had the artistic temperament, and wanted a story to be better than God meant it to be." -- John Buchan, "The Thirty-Nine Steps"John Buchan's words above, from his most famous novel, "The Thirty-Nine Steps," describe one of his characters, not himself. Buchan was not one to try to make a story "better than God meant it to be." His 1915 novel, in the version I read, is just 120 pages long, a fraction of what most espionage thrillers run today. Buchan, a pioneer in the genre, told just the basic story. A full century later the story still makes exciting reading, even if for anyone who has seen Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 movie based on the book, it feels like something is missing.That's because Hitchcock, who had an artistic temperament, added embellishments that Buchan, who was still living at the time, may have considered an attempt to make it better than God meant it to be. There's no woman, no character for Madeleine Carroll to play, in Buchan's novel. Nor is there a character called Mr. Memory, who reveals the 39 steps at the climax of the film. In Buchan's story, the 39 steps are, in fact, 39 steps, a staircase leading down to the beach, where spies plan to rendezvous.The basic plot remain unchanged in the film version. Richard Hannay learns of a German plot to learn British secrets before the outbreak of war. A murder in his flat sends him on the run, both to escape the German spies and to escape the police, who consider him the prime suspect in the murder. The story is mostly a long chase, with several narrow escapes.Hitchcock's movie would probably not be regarded as the classic it is today had it not been for the embellishments the director added. Yet the original novel reads just fine the way it is, as God, or at least John Buchan, intended.

[santhony_35 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

For Christmas, I ordered an mp3 player (Library of Classics) that was pre-loaded with 100 works of classic literature in an audio format. Each work is in the public domain and is read by amateurs, so the quality of the presentation is hit or miss. The Thirty Nine Steps is a suspense/mystery novel dealing with intrigue leading up to World War I. The British narrator receives a strange visitor who gives him sensitive information involving a possible assassination attempt on a Balkan dignitary. When the visitor is soon killed, the narrator realizes he is not only in trouble with the authorities (suspected of having murdered the victim), but even more so from the shadowy German organization who must silence him in order to proceed with their plans. The narrator leads the Germans on a merry chase, all the while trying to piece together their ultimate plan.This is not a bad piece of work, though it is relatively unremarkable. Very average in all respects.

[nmhale_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.