John Buchan
The Thirty Nine Steps
Paperback
(CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform Nov. 7, 2018)
John Buchans The Thirty-Nine Steps is an adventure novel featuring the recurrent protagonist Richard Hannay. The story is set right before the outbreak of the Second World War in London. It starts when Hannay is visited one day by his neighbor who begs to stay with him in his apartment. The mysterious neighbor, named Scudder, later reveals that he is an American spy with information about a very dangerous German plot to assassinate the Greek premier and spread disorder throughout Europe. For this reason, Scudder is now chased by his enemies. When Hannay later finds Scudder dead in the apartment with a knife through his heart, he understands that his own life is now at stake and decides to run away. It first appeared as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine in August and September 1915 before being published in book form in October that year by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh. It is the first of five novels featuring Richard Hannay, an all-action hero with a stiff upper lip and a miraculous knack for getting himself out of sticky situations. The novel is set during May and June 1914; Europe is close to war and spies are everywhere. Richard Hannay has just returned to London from Rhodesia in order to begin a new life, when a freelance spy called Franklin P. Scudder calls on him to ask for help. Scudder reveals to Hannay that he has uncovered a German plot to murder the Greek Premier and steal British plans for the outbreak of war. Scudder claims to be following a ring of German spies called the Black Stone. John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (1875-1940). Buchan published 6 books of fiction, poetry and history while an Oxford undergraduate. He was briefly an administrator in South Africa, a political journalist and tax lawyer, and then was chief literary adviser (later a director) of publishers Thomas Nelson and Son 1906-29. This, and the books that he produced at a prodigious rate all his life, including historical biographies, such as Lord Minto (1924), and fast-paced thrillers such as The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), gave him a creative outlet and a comfortable income.
- ISBN
- 1729687849 / 9781729687840
- Pages
- 84
- Weight
- 6.4 oz.
- Dimensions
- 6.0 x 0.21 in.
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