The Thirty-nine Steps

Dee reviewed The Thirty-nine Steps by John Buchan

Review of 'The Thirty-nine Steps' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Ah, the irony of this one...

"The Thirty-Nine Steps" follows the series of events that occur in Richard Hannay's life after encountering "Scudder," a man who is later killed in Hannay's very own flat.

Hannay himself complains about the utter boredom he faces in his "ordinary" life and finds the events that take place as a product of him being informed of an assassination that had the potential to skew the then already fragile political state of Europe as events that were shaping his life into something more thrilling and exciting.

Funnily, as more of these "exciting" events played out, the book grew duller...

2/5 stars as this felt like a poor attempt at a genre better executed by the likes of Doyle or W. Collins. Two stars for the effort.

Jon Nixon reviewed The Thirty-nine Steps by John Buchan

Review of 'The Thirty-nine Steps' on 'Storygraph'

2 stars

Totally ludicrous "boys own" adventure. The writing style flows nicely but the characters are all stereotypes, none of them have any common sense, and the plot is full of holes.

If a stranger comes to you and says, "I've disfigured a corpse and left it in my room so everyone will think I'm dead. Can I stay with you for a while?" What do you do? Of course you invite him in and become firm friends. After that things start to get less believable.

The new friend gets murdered so the hero goes on the run to scotland. There he happens to walk into the home of one of the murderers. Well I guess there were only 3 million people in scotland when this was written so the odds of that happening were shorter back then.

The baddy is no smarter than the hero. He locks him up in a …

Totally ludicrous "boys own" adventure. The writing style flows nicely but the characters are all stereotypes, none of them have any common sense, and the plot is full of holes.

If a stranger comes to you and says, "I've disfigured a corpse and left it in my room so everyone will think I'm dead. Can I stay with you for a while?" What do you do? Of course you invite him in and become firm friends. After that things start to get less believable.

The new friend gets murdered so the hero goes on the run to scotland. There he happens to walk into the home of one of the murderers. Well I guess there were only 3 million people in scotland when this was written so the odds of that happening were shorter back then.

The baddy is no smarter than the hero. He locks him up in a store room full of explosives so he' able to blow his way out.

All the way through the novel, the hero gets helped by people who trust him even though he's being hunted by the police. Finally, at the end of the book, the authorities seem perfectly happy to let him take charge of their anti terrorist operation even though he's just a civilian.

Nice and short. A flowing style. But completely daft and of it's time.

Rudi reviewed The Thirty-nine Steps by John Buchan

Review of 'The Thirty-nine Steps' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

While the plot is a bit repetative (a big chunk of the book is the main character on the run, but with a new unlikely helper in each chapter), the language of the book makes up for it. Because of later parodies, it's hard to take this kind of "jolly" British seriously today, but it makes the book a delight to read. I did not even know that Hitchcock had made a film adaptation of this book, but it makes sense as this is the kind of "man on the run"-thriller he was famous for. And despite being an early example of one, it's often quite thrilling (obviously due to it being published in a serialized form).

Michael @ Knowledge Lost reviewed The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan

Review of 'The Thirty-Nine Steps' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

This book didn’t really engage me at all, I was expecting some exciting adventure about Espionage; but The thirty-nine steps didn’t deliver. There were some good bits but for the most of it I thought there interactions were too unrealistic. The movie is so much better, the book just felt like a bit of a miss.