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Richard Hannay #1-5
The Complete Richard Hannay Stories
Major General Sir Richard Hannay is the fictional secret agent created by writer and diplomat John Buchan, who was himself an Intelligence officer during the First World War. The strong and silent type, combining the dour temperament of the Scot with the stiff upper lip of the Englishman, Hannay is pre-eminent among early spy-thriller heroes. Caught up in the first of these five gripping adventures just before the outbreak of war in 1914, he manages to thwart the enemy's evil plan and solve the mystery of the 'thirty-nine steps'.
In Greenmantle, he undertakes a vital mission to prevent jihad in the Islamic Near East. Mr Standfast, set in the decisive months of 1917-18, is the novel in which Hannay, after a life lived 'wholly among men', finally falls in love; later, in The Three Hostages, he finds himself unravelling a kidnapping mystery with his wife's help. In the last adventure, The Island of Sheep, he is called upon to honour an old oath.
A shrewd judge of men, he never dehumanises his enemy, and despite sharing some of the racial prejudices of his day, Richard Hannay is a worthy prototype hero of espionage fiction.
In Greenmantle, he undertakes a vital mission to prevent jihad in the Islamic Near East. Mr Standfast, set in the decisive months of 1917-18, is the novel in which Hannay, after a life lived 'wholly among men', finally falls in love; later, in The Three Hostages, he finds himself unravelling a kidnapping mystery with his wife's help. In the last adventure, The Island of Sheep, he is called upon to honour an old oath.
A shrewd judge of men, he never dehumanises his enemy, and despite sharing some of the racial prejudices of his day, Richard Hannay is a worthy prototype hero of espionage fiction.
992 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1932
65 people are currently reading
435 people want to read
About the author
John Buchan
1,740 books475 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
John Buchan was a Scottish novelist, historian, and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the 15th since Canadian Confederation.
As a youth, Buchan began writing poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction, publishing his first novel in 1895 and ultimately writing over a hundred books of which the best known is The Thirty-Nine Steps. After attending Glasgow and Oxford universities, he practised as a barrister. In 1901, he served as a private secretary to Lord Milner in southern Africa towards the end of the Boer War. He returned to England in 1903, continued as a barrister and journalist. He left the Bar when he joined Thomas Nelson and Sons publishers in 1907. During the First World War, he was, among other activities, Director of Information in 1917 and later Head of Intelligence at the newly-formed Ministry of Information. He was elected Member of Parliament for the Combined Scottish Universities in 1927.
In 1935, King George V, on the advice of Canadian Prime Minister R. B. Bennett, appointed Buchan to succeed the Earl of Bessborough as Governor General of Canada and two months later raised him to the peerage as 1st Baron Tweedsmuir. He occupied the post until his death in 1940. Buchan promoted Canadian unity and helped strengthen the sovereignty of Canada constitutionally and culturally. He received a state funeral in Canada before his ashes were returned to the United Kingdom.
John Buchan was a Scottish novelist, historian, and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the 15th since Canadian Confederation.
As a youth, Buchan began writing poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction, publishing his first novel in 1895 and ultimately writing over a hundred books of which the best known is The Thirty-Nine Steps. After attending Glasgow and Oxford universities, he practised as a barrister. In 1901, he served as a private secretary to Lord Milner in southern Africa towards the end of the Boer War. He returned to England in 1903, continued as a barrister and journalist. He left the Bar when he joined Thomas Nelson and Sons publishers in 1907. During the First World War, he was, among other activities, Director of Information in 1917 and later Head of Intelligence at the newly-formed Ministry of Information. He was elected Member of Parliament for the Combined Scottish Universities in 1927.
In 1935, King George V, on the advice of Canadian Prime Minister R. B. Bennett, appointed Buchan to succeed the Earl of Bessborough as Governor General of Canada and two months later raised him to the peerage as 1st Baron Tweedsmuir. He occupied the post until his death in 1940. Buchan promoted Canadian unity and helped strengthen the sovereignty of Canada constitutionally and culturally. He received a state funeral in Canada before his ashes were returned to the United Kingdom.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
May 8, 2013
Completely un-PC, right wing, colonial, pro-war, unbelievably ludicrous plots but great to read.
August 14, 2013
I have always liked John Bucan's The Thirty-Nine Steps, and I enjoyed reading it again on my kobo arc.
John Buchan's was a great writer, thrills and suspense on every page. I recommend his writing to anyone willing to go back to the 'old' books.
John Buchan's was a great writer, thrills and suspense on every page. I recommend his writing to anyone willing to go back to the 'old' books.
April 18, 2018
Plenty of political incorrectness in terms of the manner in which reference is made to other nationalities, races or religions, reflective of another age - and we are the better for that. Of the five stories included, 'The Thirty-Nine Steps' is the best known, simply, I suspect, no because of the various film (and recently stage) adaptations. Not as much to it as I had anticipated after seeing various adaptations. The two stories set amid Wirld War 1, 'Greenmantle' and 'Mr Standfast' both had plenty to enjoy but I actually found the two set post-WW1 more satisfying overall: 'The Three Hostages' particularly held my interest, largely because of the psychology within the characterisations - and perhaps because, by the time I read it, I had become familiar with various characters while 'The Island of Sheep' was also rewarding for its combination of character, setting and a relatively simpler plot. Glad I read them.
August 18, 2021
This has taken me a while! A 2017 Christmas present from my brother, I have read the five stories far apart, so far apart that the basics of some of the plots escape me.
These books have not aged well. They are set amongst the upper classes of the early part of the 20th century and the accepted prejudices of the age, principally casual racism, is in frequent evidence amongst the heroes and villains. However, I don't believe it's reasonable to judge and condemn the past by today's standards. So how are the novels?
In my early teens, my path out of what is now called Young Adult Fiction took me through Jack Higgins and Alistair MacLean, thrillers featuring incredibly talented heroes besting dastardly villains (usually Nazis) with thrilling feats. Had I come across John Buchan in that period I suspect I would have loved him. They are the same style, simply set in WWI and it's aftermath, not WWII and it's aftermath. They are the Tom Clancy's of the era. But the characteristics I grew bored of in Higgins and MacLean are also evident. The heroes are too talented - no matter the language, there is always someone who speaks it - but the biggest problem is the coincidences and plot twists are too ludicrous for me to take seriously.
(e.g. wandering around Skye, the lost hero stumbles across a hidden cavern on no map, and there bumps into a man he met 3 months previously at a dinner party in the south of England; a soldier he picks a fight with in a pub in Edinburgh to cause a distraction appears weeks later on a train in Wigan; the list goes on and on). My adult self has a dislike of books and stories that place overreliance on coincidence, and I found this difficult to overcome.
I can see why the 39 Steps is famous, it's a classic chase story that translates to film easily. Of the others I like the Island of Sheep best, perhaps because I was ready and braced for the nonsense, and perhaps because it was short.
These books have not aged well. They are set amongst the upper classes of the early part of the 20th century and the accepted prejudices of the age, principally casual racism, is in frequent evidence amongst the heroes and villains. However, I don't believe it's reasonable to judge and condemn the past by today's standards. So how are the novels?
In my early teens, my path out of what is now called Young Adult Fiction took me through Jack Higgins and Alistair MacLean, thrillers featuring incredibly talented heroes besting dastardly villains (usually Nazis) with thrilling feats. Had I come across John Buchan in that period I suspect I would have loved him. They are the same style, simply set in WWI and it's aftermath, not WWII and it's aftermath. They are the Tom Clancy's of the era. But the characteristics I grew bored of in Higgins and MacLean are also evident. The heroes are too talented - no matter the language, there is always someone who speaks it - but the biggest problem is the coincidences and plot twists are too ludicrous for me to take seriously.
(e.g. wandering around Skye, the lost hero stumbles across a hidden cavern on no map, and there bumps into a man he met 3 months previously at a dinner party in the south of England; a soldier he picks a fight with in a pub in Edinburgh to cause a distraction appears weeks later on a train in Wigan; the list goes on and on). My adult self has a dislike of books and stories that place overreliance on coincidence, and I found this difficult to overcome.
I can see why the 39 Steps is famous, it's a classic chase story that translates to film easily. Of the others I like the Island of Sheep best, perhaps because I was ready and braced for the nonsense, and perhaps because it was short.
May 17, 2015
Further adventures of Richard Hannay, in a convenient single volume edition for all the lovers of 'Thirty-nine steps'.
April 17, 2023
I have read all these books several times, the first would be in the late 50's when I was a young teenager. Goodness, what page turners they all were. What places I've visited and re-visited in my impatination (and in reality). I've read all these stories subsequently when wanting a bit of harmless escapism to what seems, to this now older white middle class post-war Anglo-Saxon, as a far simpler world. My parents and their cohort had fought WW2 on my behalf, my grandparents WW1 - I had no worries in this regard. Richard Hannay is the protagonist in each book, along with his friends, who take part in his adventures. Hannay, Scotsman first, mining engineer in S. Africa, major-general WW1, and then man of property in rural Oxforshire. A true "whiteman". First of course, and most famously, is the "Thirty Nine Steps", made even more famous by Alfred Hitchcock's unbeatable film version, but all five volumes provide similar "Boy's Own" entertainment. One recurring theme of all these books is Buchan's obvious love for the English and Scottish countryside, for nature, but similar rapturous prose is related to South Africa and the "Norlands" (presumably the Faroes?) in Greenmantle and The Island of Sheep, respectively. As a hunter, shooter, fisher, not a stretch of water passes by Hannay's gaze but with an eye to what fish might be landed from it or what wide and craggy moorland but with a thought to the deer or grouse hiding in the braes and the heather. .
There is a plentiful supply of villainy and violence which our hero and his friends have to deal with. I really don't know what the younger reader would make of these books nowadays. Our wokish sensibilities might run counter to the jingoism of these books and in particular some degree of racism and possible anti-semitism, though perhaps more fairly described as a reflection of the simple Anglo-Saxon superiority of those times, which unfortunately still runs pretty deep, as we run a murderous proxy war in Ukraine and talk belligerently to China.
John Buchan was actually more than just a teller of yarns, he was a very good writer, his stories are adventures told in the first person, and depend on the devices all such stories make use of - coincidence and luck, in spadefuls. But who cares? He was in the same literary space as Rider Haggard used to be, and subsequently a beacon for such as Hammond Innes and Alistair McLean. In the evening, put on your slippers, seat yourself in an old leather high-back arm chair next the bookcase, with a standard lamp behind you, and an occasional table with your mug of beer or tumbler of malt whisky, and and immerse yourself in Buchan's romances of daring-do, and the hours will pass quickly and you'll find you're looking at your old wind-up watch and it's already well past midnight.......
There is a plentiful supply of villainy and violence which our hero and his friends have to deal with. I really don't know what the younger reader would make of these books nowadays. Our wokish sensibilities might run counter to the jingoism of these books and in particular some degree of racism and possible anti-semitism, though perhaps more fairly described as a reflection of the simple Anglo-Saxon superiority of those times, which unfortunately still runs pretty deep, as we run a murderous proxy war in Ukraine and talk belligerently to China.
John Buchan was actually more than just a teller of yarns, he was a very good writer, his stories are adventures told in the first person, and depend on the devices all such stories make use of - coincidence and luck, in spadefuls. But who cares? He was in the same literary space as Rider Haggard used to be, and subsequently a beacon for such as Hammond Innes and Alistair McLean. In the evening, put on your slippers, seat yourself in an old leather high-back arm chair next the bookcase, with a standard lamp behind you, and an occasional table with your mug of beer or tumbler of malt whisky, and and immerse yourself in Buchan's romances of daring-do, and the hours will pass quickly and you'll find you're looking at your old wind-up watch and it's already well past midnight.......
February 17, 2022
“Someone put a tea-tray on the table beside us, and I looked up to see the very prettiest girl I had ever set eyes on. She seemed little more than a child, and before the war would probably have still ranked as a flapper. She wore the neat blue dress and apron of a VAD, and her white cap was set on hair like spun gold. She smiled demurely as she arranged the tea-things, and I thought I had never seen eyes at once so merry and so grave. I stared after her as she walked across the lawn, and I remember noticing that she moved with the free grace of an athletic boy.”
An open letter to all classic books:
Please stop comparing women to young boys! If I had a nickel for every time a woman was described as having the "something of a young boy", I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.
(The other time is Dune when Lady Fenring's neck is described as being, "...a truly lovely flowing of muscles- like a young boy's.”)
In this case, his love interest is "barely older than a child" and "the grace of an athletic boy". This was right after he described her aunt as "the wrong side of forty" and when he informed us himself that he was forty.
I swear.
This is one of the cases where I'd argue the Bechdel isn't a complete test. Thirty-Nine Steps was fantastic, and I liked Greenmantle. The man can write men, and there is nothing wrong with that! It was when he decided to write a love interest that everything went terrible. I don't think it's that hard to stop comparing them to young boys and to age them appropriately, but I didn't invent the espionage genre, so what do I know?
That being said, Hilda von Einem was a girlboss. No I will not elaborate.
An open letter to all classic books:
Please stop comparing women to young boys! If I had a nickel for every time a woman was described as having the "something of a young boy", I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.
(The other time is Dune when Lady Fenring's neck is described as being, "...a truly lovely flowing of muscles- like a young boy's.”)
In this case, his love interest is "barely older than a child" and "the grace of an athletic boy". This was right after he described her aunt as "the wrong side of forty" and when he informed us himself that he was forty.
I swear.
This is one of the cases where I'd argue the Bechdel isn't a complete test. Thirty-Nine Steps was fantastic, and I liked Greenmantle. The man can write men, and there is nothing wrong with that! It was when he decided to write a love interest that everything went terrible. I don't think it's that hard to stop comparing them to young boys and to age them appropriately, but I didn't invent the espionage genre, so what do I know?
That being said, Hilda von Einem was a girlboss. No I will not elaborate.
September 8, 2017
This 'omnibus' includes the five Richard Hannay stories in 'novella' form. I read these back to back. They are: The Thiry Nine Steps, Greenmantle, Mr Standfast, The Three Hostages and The Island of Sheep. Buchan is best known for the first of these because at least two films have been produced based on the work. It is not the best of the bunch, though, and the films viewed now are second rate. I would say Greenmantle or Mr Standfast are better books as they go into character and place in more depth and with more realism (and less coincidence). Nevertheless, the stories are quite gripping, at times, and, unwittingly, perhaps, give us an idea about the social mores at play during the first decades of the twentieth century. Not too much PC around then, old boy!
July 3, 2017
old fashioned adventure stories, not every story is that exciting all the time and sometimes too long. I would advise read them not five in a row as it sometimes gets too much
39 steps is short and probably the best, at a good pace 4 stars
Greenmantle is situated in the first world war, nice adventure but probably not really believable, 4 stars
Mr Standfast was the least for me, a little bit slow and if you know who is the bad guy halfway, it's not that exciting anymore 4 stars
The Three Hostages the same, nice story and well thought but halfway you already know so would be better a bit shorter three stars
The Island of Sheep is second best, slow start but thrilling finale 4 stars
39 steps is short and probably the best, at a good pace 4 stars
Greenmantle is situated in the first world war, nice adventure but probably not really believable, 4 stars
Mr Standfast was the least for me, a little bit slow and if you know who is the bad guy halfway, it's not that exciting anymore 4 stars
The Three Hostages the same, nice story and well thought but halfway you already know so would be better a bit shorter three stars
The Island of Sheep is second best, slow start but thrilling finale 4 stars
June 9, 2019
I have to confess to being enthralled reading "The Thirty Nine Steps" when I was about 12. Somehow, today this collection seems to go down hill after "Greenmantle" and the stories becoming increasingly silly and the "prejudices of the day" increasingly wearing. It seems you can outgrow even novelists.
November 5, 2024
Buchan is no great writer considering the leaps of logic and unbelievable coincidence that abound in these old school adventure novels which, despite being a bit questionable in terms of its racial language (a product of the time) still manage to be hugely enjoyable.
February 4, 2018
Hannay
A little dates in speech but nonetheless a compelling read.
Need to remember the date when written when considering the tone and language
A little dates in speech but nonetheless a compelling read.
Need to remember the date when written when considering the tone and language
May 7, 2018
I can only try to imagine the impact this series had when written; it is a fantastic read today.
July 17, 2020
Excellent pieces of thrilling narrative with a touch of philosophy about war and life.
March 20, 2021
Escapism
For some sixty years Richard Hannay has been a " friend"
When all seems grim and the world palls Buchan soothes
For some sixty years Richard Hannay has been a " friend"
When all seems grim and the world palls Buchan soothes
May 13, 2021
Dated, and full of mad coincidences, but still rattling good fun.
April 25, 2022
A book that will probably be banned in the future as long as we dont want to accept our social history. Love it.
September 19, 2022
Starts with The Thirty-Nine Steps and goes downhill from there. All the novels rely on coincidence and bluff to resolve the storylines and the characters are ciphers at best. Disappointing.
September 16, 2023
Racist and antisemitic!
The work of a white supremacist! So incredibly bigoted it beggars belief. Furthermore very longwinded and tedious. Not one to be recommended.
The work of a white supremacist! So incredibly bigoted it beggars belief. Furthermore very longwinded and tedious. Not one to be recommended.
August 14, 2011
Once again, I had to read a door-stopper of a book to re-realize the reasons that had compelled me to concentrate upon short-stories, and had led me to abandoning novels. The 5 adventures in this book, all involving the heroic activites of Richard Hannay, were classic examples of something being wrong with my idea of readable reads, as they established the follwoing: -
1) As long as the story was short, compact, and the hero had to rely on presence of mind, physical fitness, and practical courage to overcome the obstacles as well as to solve the myriad mysteries that he encountered in the process, the book remained "un-put-down-able". The moment the author started padding his stories with stuff that howlingly asks for suspension of disbelief, I drofted off.
2) Richard Hannay works perfectly as a hero as long he kept himself confined to adventures that had simply come his away, and he didn't have to chase them. The moment the opposite happens, where somehow the fit & practical soldier is tailored into the clothes of a secret agent and shooed away to do job that the professionals have failed to do so far, he lost me.
3) Somehow Buchan succeeded in sullying the plain & pure guilty fun that was being drawn by me out of the "boys' yarn"-s in the first two novels, by introducing the pompous Mary in the third novel onwards. This barely legal aged lady, who suddenly became the love-of-the-life of our hero (as well as the villain of the third novel) sermonises, acts as a secret member of the secret service to the extent where her advice & direction is sought for by experienced persons who know a thing-or-to about espionage, and (if these are not despicable enough) ties the hands of our hero by compelling him to be at places where he has no business (esp. in the fourth novel where neither the hero is compelled to act as the last action hero against a kidnapping cartel when Scotland Yard has failed to do the needful) to be!
4) Buchan knows his Scotland, and even in his most casual observations about Scotland the feelings shine through everything, but when he enters the "high adventure" territory of Near East and and Central Asia, he piles up adventure-upon-adventure, with characters increasingly becoming cartoonish and self-contradicting.
Overall, the best novel in this collection is "The Thirty Nine Steps", where the author knows the lay of the land, the hero knows and acts within his limitations, there is great fun & suspense in the cat & mouse game that unfolds through the novel, and, most importantly, its compact length allows the author to deal with minimum characters with maximum dynamics. The pace slakens in "Greenmantle". It almost becomes a crawl in "Mr. Standfast". And the final two novels are not worthy of mention, because by that time Mr. Hannay had lost his turf and had become simply a continuity, like the last few stories of Sherlock Holmes when even the author was simply dragging on till the end.
1) As long as the story was short, compact, and the hero had to rely on presence of mind, physical fitness, and practical courage to overcome the obstacles as well as to solve the myriad mysteries that he encountered in the process, the book remained "un-put-down-able". The moment the author started padding his stories with stuff that howlingly asks for suspension of disbelief, I drofted off.
2) Richard Hannay works perfectly as a hero as long he kept himself confined to adventures that had simply come his away, and he didn't have to chase them. The moment the opposite happens, where somehow the fit & practical soldier is tailored into the clothes of a secret agent and shooed away to do job that the professionals have failed to do so far, he lost me.
3) Somehow Buchan succeeded in sullying the plain & pure guilty fun that was being drawn by me out of the "boys' yarn"-s in the first two novels, by introducing the pompous Mary in the third novel onwards. This barely legal aged lady, who suddenly became the love-of-the-life of our hero (as well as the villain of the third novel) sermonises, acts as a secret member of the secret service to the extent where her advice & direction is sought for by experienced persons who know a thing-or-to about espionage, and (if these are not despicable enough) ties the hands of our hero by compelling him to be at places where he has no business (esp. in the fourth novel where neither the hero is compelled to act as the last action hero against a kidnapping cartel when Scotland Yard has failed to do the needful) to be!
4) Buchan knows his Scotland, and even in his most casual observations about Scotland the feelings shine through everything, but when he enters the "high adventure" territory of Near East and and Central Asia, he piles up adventure-upon-adventure, with characters increasingly becoming cartoonish and self-contradicting.
Overall, the best novel in this collection is "The Thirty Nine Steps", where the author knows the lay of the land, the hero knows and acts within his limitations, there is great fun & suspense in the cat & mouse game that unfolds through the novel, and, most importantly, its compact length allows the author to deal with minimum characters with maximum dynamics. The pace slakens in "Greenmantle". It almost becomes a crawl in "Mr. Standfast". And the final two novels are not worthy of mention, because by that time Mr. Hannay had lost his turf and had become simply a continuity, like the last few stories of Sherlock Holmes when even the author was simply dragging on till the end.
September 24, 2016
This book is actually 1 short story and 4 novels in one. I got through the short sort, The 39 Steps, which is terrific. I loved being able to reconcile the story to all the movie versions I have seen. Then I res the next two novels, which were overly long. Too much political ruminating and just plain too much of everything. I finally decided I had had enough Richard Hannay and didn't bother reading the last 2 novels.
October 10, 2010
Anyone who is a fan of old movies -- and especially Hitchcock -- will recall "The Thirty-nine Steps," the quintessential spy thriller involving the ordinary guy dragged into a war-time conspiracy. Our hero, Richard Hannay, sorts out the mess and prevents the bad guys from winning by a combination of luck and grit, with touch of 'brains'. It's good, rollicking fun, and the author of the original novel, John Buchan, went on to write 4 more Richard Hannay novels to meet a never-ending demand for spy stories like these. I've just waded through all 5 during several long travel days, and I'm happy to report that they are all diverting reads. The first remains the best, but the others, especially Greenmantle and Mr Standfast (both war novels), are good too. Buchan is at his best when his hero is dismantling a vast world-wide conspiracy to destroy the free world, and part of the charm of these pre-Bond books is that the conspiracies feel just a bit dated and the masterminds just a bit simple. There is a bit of unintentional hilarity, mostly in The Three Hostages, which puts forth the idea that an evil mastermind could take over the world by hypnotizing a few key players into doing his bidding. Fortunately our hero is immune, being a plain, hearty English gentleman, and thereby hangs a tale.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of these novels today is the insight that they give into the concerns of people in the first part of the 20th century. Someone once said that the past is a foreign country, and that seemed very true reading these charming books. We still have conspiracy theories today, of course; they're just very, very different.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of these novels today is the insight that they give into the concerns of people in the first part of the 20th century. Someone once said that the past is a foreign country, and that seemed very true reading these charming books. We still have conspiracy theories today, of course; they're just very, very different.
April 14, 2016
Like most reviewers I came to this omnibus via Hitchcock's 1930's film of the 39 Steps, one of my favorite films. If I was to review that story alone I'd give it a clear 4 stars, but I've averaged it out for the collection at 3.
These books were written almost as British Empire propaganda and daring do. As such the pattern of improbable plots, narrow escapes, and world wide conspiracies, which only a lone hero can resolve, wears a bit thin with repetition. The stories reminded me of the Boys Own Annuals that I inherited from my uncles who grew up in the 1930's. Having said that they do have there own charm in the way they represent attitudes and prejudices of those times.
As an example of the mores you'll find in these books, Buchan is suspected of racism and particularly anti Semitism, and there are passages to support that in the books. On the other hand he has defenders who say he simply reflected attitudes 0f the time in his characters and was not himself actively racist. Rather than putting me off, I found the general representation of the attitudes of the time one of the points of interest.
I'm not going to go into writing, style of character etc. These are almost irrelevant. You'll either like, or at least accept, the dated nature of the books, or you won't.
This collection will go on my shelves with my complete Dashiell Hammett and Chandler. Buchan is not in that class but he is interesting. 3 stars
These books were written almost as British Empire propaganda and daring do. As such the pattern of improbable plots, narrow escapes, and world wide conspiracies, which only a lone hero can resolve, wears a bit thin with repetition. The stories reminded me of the Boys Own Annuals that I inherited from my uncles who grew up in the 1930's. Having said that they do have there own charm in the way they represent attitudes and prejudices of those times.
As an example of the mores you'll find in these books, Buchan is suspected of racism and particularly anti Semitism, and there are passages to support that in the books. On the other hand he has defenders who say he simply reflected attitudes 0f the time in his characters and was not himself actively racist. Rather than putting me off, I found the general representation of the attitudes of the time one of the points of interest.
I'm not going to go into writing, style of character etc. These are almost irrelevant. You'll either like, or at least accept, the dated nature of the books, or you won't.
This collection will go on my shelves with my complete Dashiell Hammett and Chandler. Buchan is not in that class but he is interesting. 3 stars
August 7, 2023
I've finished reading the 39 Steps, and find the style quite stilted and the plot too straight forward to keep my interest for long. I know why I enjoyed this book as a teenager, as it is simple, clear, with not too many complex ideas to explore (as an adolescent one needs one's resources for other things). Reading this was a bit like eating pancakes for lunch, they are filling, tasty with toppings, but don't give you much nutrition and you end up feeling hungry soon after, and wishing you'd eaten a BLT instead. Oh well. I'll read the other Richard Hannay stories in the book, just for nostalgia's sake.
February 4, 2022
Buchan’s books are full of DIY heroes, men thrown into impossible situations but who manage to survive through their wits, a healthy dose of humor - and if necessary, with their fists. The book follows the hero Hannay, as he tries to escape German spies, first through England and then the wilderness of Scotland. The odds are stacked high against Hannay, but his bravura and strong will help him solve the mystery and dissolve the spy ring. Some of the views expressed in Buchan’s books are no longer politically correct and his works should always be understood in the context of his times; yet they make for very compelling reading.
August 28, 2008
one of the early superheroes, but always an English gentleman withal. Great fun. While the gung-ho attitudes and stiff-upper-lippishness sometimes gets a bit much, it needs to be borne in mind that these books were written specifically as propaganda to help the war effort - Buchan's real feelings on the war are not Hannay's.
August 19, 2012
Enjoyable early 20th century adventure stories From a different era with some racial and ethnic prejudices but a fascinating precursor to some spy/thriller works today. Hero always respects the humanity of his opponents. Honour and integrity important virtues. Most will have read or watched (stage or TV productions) of The Thirty Nine Steps.
April 16, 2011
I've finished the first book in this volume, The Thirty-Nine Steps, so my rating is currently based on that one novel.
Well written and easy to read. The first person narrative gets you into Hannay's adventures very quickly. Cracking stuff!
Well written and easy to read. The first person narrative gets you into Hannay's adventures very quickly. Cracking stuff!
February 11, 2014
I love John Buchan's writing. I've read the 39 Steps before and loved it, so I was delighted to find this.
The other stories continue to follow the adventures of the reluctant spy, Richard Hannay, through a number of different adventures.
The other stories continue to follow the adventures of the reluctant spy, Richard Hannay, through a number of different adventures.
July 10, 2012
Loved the old empire style of language and thinking, not applicable to our generation any more, but perhaps a little could be. Fast paced but all the stories are similar.
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