Rating: 
Summary: Just Plain Fun!
Review: This is one of those short novels that is just a fun read. The main character is taken on a journey that leads him away from the boredom he was experiencing in London. It is a simple first-person story with a very interesting writing style. John Buchan manages to make the "rookie-happenstance-spy being chased by everyone" story work without a hitch.I wish I had read this novel sooner. I believe it is a must read for anyone interested in good literature and storytelling. I felt like the main character, Richard Hannay, was telling me the story as he puffed on his tobacco pipe. Hannay is like a man trapped in a giant rolling snowball...cept' he's enjoying the wild ride and ignoring the eventual crash. Buchan made the suspense, the landscape, and the travel blend together in a very well-rounded adventure. I have never seen the movie adaptation, but will definitely look for it. www.therunninggirl.com
Rating:
Summary: Just Plain Fun!
Review: This is one of those short novels that is just a fun read. The main character is taken on a journey that leads him away from the boredom he was experiencing in London. It is a simple first-person story with a very interesting writing style. John Buchan manages to make the "rookie-happenstance-spy being chased by everyone" story work without a hitch. I wish I had read this novel sooner. I believe it is a must read for anyone interested in good literature and storytelling. I felt like the main character, Richard Hannay, was telling me the story as he puffed on his tobacco pipe. Hannay is like a man trapped in a giant rolling snowball...cept' he's enjoying the wild ride and ignoring the eventual crash. Buchan made the suspense, the landscape, and the travel blend together in a very well-rounded adventure. I have never seen the movie adaptation, but will definitely look for it. www.therunninggirl.com
Rating: 
Summary: SPYING IN THE AGE OF INNOCENECE
Review: `Behind me was the road climbing through a long cleft in the hills...In front was a flat space of maybe a mile, all pitted with bog holes and rough with tussocks...To the left and right were round-shouldered green hills as smooth as pancakes, but to the south there was a glimpse of high heathery mountains, which I remembered from the map as the big knot of hill, which I had chosen for my sanctuary...Then I saw an aeroplane coming up from the east.' Osama bin Laden soliloquizing in the wilderness of Tora Bora? Nah, we are dealing here with much less violent times. It's the hero of THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS describing his hideout in the outback of Scotland, during the days preceding the World War I. Richard Hannay is on visit to London for a break in the old country after a successful career in mining in Rhodesia. Soon the suburbia gets the better of him. As he decides to return to South Africa, he stumbles upon a situation that promises him a world of unalloyed excitement and adventure. A stranger, privy to a plot hatched by Anarchists to destabilize Europe, seeks shelter in his apartment. He doesn't last there long, as the plotters catch up with him and bump him off. Hannay decides to take up the ill-fated man's mission and gets thickly embroiled in the plot. What follows is a long and colourful retreat from the arms of law as well as from the dragnet of the plotters. This escape takes us through the glens, heathers, rivers, hills, streams, dykes and moors of Scotland. Hannay changes his guise several times to give the villains the slip. As D-Day approaches he comes out of his hiding and with the help of the top brass of the secret service swoops down on the German spies. THE TIRTY-NINE STEPS is a classic espionage thriller. The influences of Conan Doyle are discernible in the passages dealing with human nature. John Buchan is probably too conscious of the Master's influence when he makes the innkeeper utter, `It is all pure Rider Haggard and Conan Doyle.' The sound logic used to explain moves and motives of the characters also makes for interesting reading. What strikes you most in the novel is the `gentlemanly' unfolding of the drama. There are murderers, plotter, villains and spies, yet blood and gore and mindless killing are missing. Everybody is playing to the rule, as it is. This appears so unrealistic in today's world characterized by suicide squads, terrorist states and mass-destruction. But the story is set in a time that was innocent. The spies allowed themselves to be 'caught' at the end, rather than blow themselves up. The book is successful in recording the social and political attitudes of the times in the most candid way. The story has been filmed several times; probably most memorably by Alfred Hitchcock with Robert Donat in the lead.
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