I found it very entertaining at first, but somewhere in the middle I thought it became a bit tedious and repetitive. Each chapter feels almost like a separate short story, which is maybe explained by the fact that the novel was originally published as a serial in Blackwood’s Magazine so needed to be written in an easily digestible format. The remainder of the novel follows Hannay’s adventures while on the run, most of which involve being chased around the Scottish countryside and having encounters with various eccentric characters, who could be friends but are equally likely to be enemies. It seems he is about to have all the excitement he could have wished for – and more.Īll of this happens in the first two chapters. Desperate to get away, he flees to Scotland with the intention of hiding there for a while until he can think of a way to continue Scudder’s work and prevent the assassination of Karolides. Scudder believes his life is in danger and asks Hannay to shelter him for the night, but when the agent is murdered inside his home, Hannay fears that the killers will come for him next. Scudder, an American secret agent, and who claims to have uncovered a plot to destabilise Europe by assassinating Constantine Karolides, an important Greek politician. He is approached by a stranger who introduces himself as Franklin P. That evening, as luck would have it, something does happen.

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. At Oxford Circus I looked up into the spring sky and I made a vow. I gave half-a-crown to a beggar because I saw him yawn he was a fellow-sufferer. These shop-girls and clerks and dandies and policemen had some interest in life that kept them going. The crowd surged past me on the pavements, busy and chattering, and I envied the people for having something to do.

As the story begins, Hannay has been in England for three months and is feeling bored, homesick and disillusioned: The novel is narrated in the first person by Richard Hannay, who has recently arrived in London having spent most of his life living in Africa.

Published in 1915, The Thirty-Nine Steps is set during the May and June of the previous year, just before the outbreak of war in Europe. I wasn’t at all sure that it would be my sort of book, which is why I’ve put off reading it for so long, but I knew there must be a reason why it is so well-loved and has been adapted for film and television so many times. Never having read anything by John Buchan before, the logical place to start seemed to be with his most famous novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps.

The thirty nine steps oxford