The Thirty-Nine Steps [Kindle Edition]

This must be the third 39 Steps Kindle book I've reviewed this week, but sometimes it is worth making a point -- especially when such a terrific work of literature is at stake. This is not quite as bad as the two other editions I reviewed. But it is, again, the same text stolen from Project Gutenberg and without any typos or formatting issues corrected.

Ugly sepia stills from the film have been interspersed throughout. They do not improve matters.

I think 'one-click' purchasing is all that keeps some of these appalling editions alive. There are one or two very attractive, carefully edited and formatted editions of the 39 Steps available. A quick 15 seconds of clicking through Amazon search results will reveal them to you. This is not one of them.

First published in 1915 when Europe was locked in conflict triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in the Balkans, John Buchan's Thirty-Nine Steps takes the tensions and conspiracies which led Europe to war as the backdrop for his timeless adventure story.

The lead character Richard Hannay, is simply a bored Gentleman in London pining for South Africa and his native Scotland until a man is murdered in his flat after pouring out in panic the details of a conspiracy which threatened war against the United Kingdom. Richard Hannay effortlessly takes up the dead man's position as he attempts to prevent national disaster whilst hunted by foreign conspirators and British police alike.

The author describes his novel, in a dedication to his friend Thomas Nelson at the beginning of the book, as a ``shocker' - the romance where the incidents defy the probabilities, and march just inside the borders of the possible'. Certainly Richard Hannay has a remarkable ability to extract himself from the most difficult of situations throughout the tale.

The Thirty-Nine Steps is truly an adventure story because it takes an ordinary person as its hero. Richard Hannay is plunged into the adventure as suddenly as the reader and so there is an immediate connection. The author shamelessly betrays his love for the genre citing Rider Haggard and Conan Doyle as masters of adventure and crime writing within the book. This passion for the genre is very apparent and Buchan writes with a subtle humour throughout, evidence of how much he clearly enjoyed creating the story. Equally apparently is his love of the Scottish countryside which is described delightfully throughout and poetically at times, as are the host of minor characters which populate the landscape.

The story develops at pace and Hannay's chase from London across Scotland and back down to the South Coast means that without warning the reader finds himself tearing through the final chapter for resolution. The fact that the book is over all too soon can hardly be seen as a fault and whilst it could be said that Buchan's style can at times be rushed The Thirty-Nine Steps is a classic which should be approached without too much cynicism. Read it as it was read by soldier's in the trenches in a Europe where it must have constantly have felt that dark subversive forces were at play, forces which, it must have been felt, would prosper were it not for the improbable heroics of brave Brits like Richard Hannay.

This is a fast-moving and exciting yarn which develops following Richard Hannay's accidental entanglement with a group of German spies in the years preceding First World War. The book was published in 1915. It has all the thrill of a schoolboy adventure with a cracking pace to boot. The reader is never bored. There are no silly romances to detract from the main plot (unlike the film adaptations) and this goes to make it a real boy's book. Buchan's description of the Scottish countryside, his knowledge of South Africa and England draws on his personal experience of these places. Richard Hannay, the hero, is intelligent, worldly-wise, physically fit, strongly patriotic and, above all, astute. He uses personal contacts to cut through the red tape and stiffness of a bureaucracy which ties up Government and for which he has no time as he fights the foe, wins the day and saves the country. He comes across as the friend we always wanted to have and possesses a character we feel inclined to emulate. John Buchan was a committed Christian who, as well as being a writer, enjoyed a very successful diplomatic career. He was made 1st Baron Tweedsmuir in 1935 when he became His Excellency the Right Honorable the Lord Tweedsmuir, Governor General and Commander-in-Chief of the Militia and Naval and Air Forces of Canada. He was born in August 1875 in Scotland and died February 1940.