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    The Thirty-Nine Steps
    The Thirty-Nine Steps
    The Thirty-Nine Steps
    Audiobook2 hours

    The Thirty-Nine Steps

    Written by John Buchan and Nick Bullard

    Narrated by Multiple Narrators

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    'I turned on the light, but there was nobody there. Then I saw something in the corner that made my blood turn cold. Scudder was lying on his back. There was a long knife through his heart, pinning him to the floor.' Soon Richard Hannay is running for his life across the hills of Scotland. The police are chasing him for a murder he did not do, and another, more dangerous enemy is chasing him as well - the mysterious 'Black Stone'. Who are these people? And why do they want Hannay dead?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOxford University Press
    Release dateNov 15, 2007
    ISBN9780194215732
    Author

    John Buchan

    John Buchan was a Scottish diplomat, barrister, journalist, historian, poet and novelist. He published nearly 30 novels and seven collections of short stories. He was born in Perth, an eldest son, and studied at Glasgow and Oxford. In 1901 he became a barrister of the Middle Temple and a private secretary to the High Commissioner for South Africa. In 1907 he married Susan Charlotte Grosvenor and they subsequently had four children. After spells as a war correspondent, Lloyd George's Director of Information and Conservative MP, Buchan moved to Canada in 1935. He served as Governor General there until his death in 1940. Hew Strachan is Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford; his research interests include military history from the 18th century to date, including contemporary strategic studies, but with particular interest in the First World War and in the history of the British Army.

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    Reviews for The Thirty-Nine Steps

    3.5/5

    1,328 ratings101 reviews

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    • 4/5
      It's May 1914 in London, England. Scottish expatriate Richard Hannay has a troublesome visitor. That's the first thing I would say about The Thirty Nine Steps. An American stranger has come to him with a wild tale of espionage and knowledge of a planned assassination. Because he was in the know, according to this stranger, Mr. Scudder, he had to fake his own death. He has come to Hannay to hide himself and his little coded book of secrets. However, imagine Hannay's surprise when that same man is found with a knife so thoroughly through the heart it skewered him to the floor! Needless to say, Hannay is now on the run...with the cipher of secrets. With Mr. Scudder dead on his floor, surely he will be the number one suspect. The rest of the short book is Hannay's attempts to hide out in Scotland, a place he hasn't seen since he was six years old, thirty one years ago. The key to the whole mystery is a reference to "39 steps" in Scudder's little book.
    • 4/5
      I thought John Buchan's "The Thirty-Nine Steps" was just okay. Written as an early thriller, it features adventurer Richard Hannay, who gets embroiled in espionage and must escape the clutches of both the local police and some more sinister characters who are following him about.The book was pretty fun initially, and I thought the framing of the story was really interesting. After Hannay's gazillionth escape from the people chasing him, it got a bit tired. It's odd to say that a 115-page book felt too long, but it did. This might have worked better as a short story. The story ties up neatly in the end and made for a decent and fast read. It didn't, however, inspire me to read the remaining four books featuring Hannay.
    • 5/5
      A classic of mystery, intrigue and adventure; set in a world immediately familiar and yet unfathomably foreign.
    • 3/5
      Interesting adaptation, although I don't understand why it was updated to being set in 1950 rather than just before World War I. Was this when it was first adapted by Classics Illustrated?It's not as good as the original novel, but is a good taster.
    • 4/5
      Not only is it a classic and a great thriller, but it also features a lot of action on a train. What more could one want?
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book very much. It was a very good, fast read with classic, historical importance. It held my interest from start to finish. If you like spy mysteries, then I would highly recommend this book.
    • 2/5
      The introduction to this slim little volume promised me that I was about to embark on a suspenseful and gripping ride. Unfortunately, whenever a book is hyped this way there is the chance that false expectations will be raised, and so it turned out. Though The Thirty-Nine Steps is known as a classic "shocker," I was left waiting for shocks that didn't come.It's 1914, and Richard Hannay has just returned to England after "making his pile" in Rhodesia when his apartment is invaded by a man who claims to be dead. Well, he isn't really dead, of course, but Franklin P. Scudder has found it expedient to fake his own death in order to avoid the real thing. Scudder is a freelance spy who's just caught on to something really big, and powerful people are after him. When they do catch up with the little man and make it look like Hannay committed the murder, our hero decides to carry on Scudder's mission himself. Thus begins a wild chase through the countryside as Hannay runs for his life and tries to figure out Scudder's little black book along the way.There are a couple things that didn't work for me. First, there is the problem of the whole worldwide conspiracy. Buchan's treatment of the subject is far better than, say, Agatha Christie's in her dreadful Passenger to Frankfurt (a book I couldn't even finish). But it never felt very real to me. Second, most of the story is taken up with the dogged pursuit our narrator is attempting to escape. I gather that this is the bulk of the suspense, but somehow it just didn't grip me. Most of the ways Hannay escapes hinge on someone being willing to trade clothes with him or a fortuitous coincidence that prevents his being seen. When he does walk right into the enemy's lair and is taken prisoner, they put him in a storeroom that contain lignite (a form of dynamite), which, due to his time spent mining in Rhodesia, he knows how to use to free himself. Hannay also just happens to recognize the man who was posing as Lord Alloa, thus uncovering the government leak, and when he needs to get rid of his stolen car he accidentally but conveniently crashes it into a ravine (himself escaping unscathed).Buchan was well aware of the crazy improbability of these events and didn't care — to him the excitement was the main thing. And a lot of readers have agreed with him. I wish I could, but I just never felt the intensity other readers ascribe to the book.One thing Buchan does very well is the portrayal of the villains once we finally catch up to them at the very end. They are the most superb actors and understand a fine point: it is only amateurs who try to look different. Professionals look the same but are different, and so escape detection. It's an interesting theory and a bit more sophisticated than Christie's masks and such that appear in her stories of false identities.Twice now I've compared Buchan favorably to Christie, but so far (not having read either author's entire oeuvre) I prefer Christie's work. Apparently The Thirty-Nine Steps was quite a hit with soldiers in the trenches during the first World War, and I can see why. A lone man, motivated by loyalty to his country, takes on the most powerful secret group in the world — and wins. A week after successfully preventing a major tactical leak, Hannay joins the army as a captain. He is made to order as a hero for the World War I soldier! I wish I could have enjoyed this more. Lesson learned: next time I'll skip the introduction and get right to the tale.
    • 4/5
      The time is 1914; the setting England and Scotland. Richard Hannay is back in London after making his money in South Africa, but he finds the city life rather boring. He has made up his mind to seek adventure elsewhere when a man from his apartment building asks for his help – there are men waiting to kill him and he needs a place to hide for a few days. Thus begins an adventure that involves German spies, international intrigue, unknown moles, a couple of murders, train rides, car chases, narrow escapes and a great deal of good luck. Hannay is charming, intelligent and resourceful, and the reader is in for a great ride.This is a classic espionage novel. If you’ve seen the Alfred Hitchcock movie of the same title – forget it (other than the name of the leading man and the basic German spy plot it has NO resemblance to the book). The Masterpiece Theater presentation (a BBC film) is closer to the book, but still markedly different. There is NO love interest in Buchan’s book at all.
    • 4/5
      The classic later filmed by Alfred Hitchcock, this book is an adventure/romance whose hero/narrator exposes a spy ring and saves Britain from an invasion.
    • 4/5
      The stretches to which the reader is expected to "suspend disbelief" in this book --the easy acceptance of a complete stranger and all he says at the highest levels of government, the absolute disguise of high level people, etc. --are incredible. On the other hand, the writing carries the reader through, drawing you on with enough detail, and enough excitement, to suspend disbelief and read.The reader should note this is a very old book, and writing styles today are a lot darker, and more lurid, than when this was written, so it might feel a little "light" to the modern reader. But don't that deter you from picking this up and trying it.
    • 4/5
      (Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)Well well, so once again it's time for another edition of "Book Versus Movie," a concept I frankly ripped off from the Onion AV Club, in which I both read a book and see the movie based on that book in the same week, and end up writing mini-reviews of both at the same time. (Don't bother looking for the "Book Versus Movie" archive page, by the way -- you've only missed one other, concerning the Alan Moore comic From Hell.) And today's it's none other than The 39 Steps, with both a book and movie version that I've wanted to get exposed to for a long time now; the 1915 novella, after all, is one of the first spy stories ever written, while the 1935 movie was one of Alfred Hitchcock's first big hits, long before he moved to Hollywood and made the films he's now most known for. (And if this title seems particularly familiar these days, by the way, it's because there's a new comedic stage version of the story playing on Broadway right now, in which four actors play every single part in a gonzo quick-change style.) Just the title alone invokes strange and pleasant emotions to us fans of turn-of-the-century "weird" fiction, of foggy nights and mysterious stairways, and it's a project I've been looking forward to for a long time now.And indeed, let me confess that the novella doesn't disappoint at all, or at least to existing fans of that transitional period of arts history; because that's something important to remember about The 39 Steps as you read it, that much like GK Chesterton or the Futurist art movement, this was penned in a strange twenty-year period in history (1900 to 1920) that fell directly between Romanticism and Modernism, a period that basically bridged these two movements precisely through wild experimentation and the birth of many of our modern artistic "genres." It is a crucial book to read, for example, if you are a fan of mysteries, secret-agent thrillers and the like; it's one of the books that literally defined those genres, a step above and beyond the pulpy "dime novels" that Buchan himself admits in the dedication was a major inspiration behind his own story. (Turns out that he and a friend were both guilty obsessive fans of pulp fiction, and thought it'd be funny to write their own homages; ironically, of course, it's this homage that is now much more known than the pulp stories that inspired it.)The tale of bored young intellectual Richard Hannay, a British South African who has recently moved to London and just hates it, our hero is actually just about to move back home when he is suddenly swept into a world of international intrigue by his next-door neighbor, a paranoid little weasel named Scudder who claims to be an undercover agent of the government, and who has stumbled across a corporate/anarchist conspiracy to assassinate a minor Greek ambassador and thus trigger a global war*. Scudder ends up dying under mysterious circumstances while hiding in Hannay's apartment, leading to him getting framed for murder; and this is just enough of an excuse to get Hannay on the run, leading to the action-based plot that takes him from one side of the UK to the other, into and out of a series of traps, and even the object of a monoplane chase back when hardly any planes actually existed. It's an exciting tale, one with all the usual twists and turns we expect now from the genre, told in a competent style that shakes off the flowery Victorianism that at the time was just ending its dominance of the arts; a thoroughly modern novel, in other words, or I guess I should say "proto-modern," one of the many above-average projects from this transitional period of history to highly influence the mature Modernists who came after.Twenty years later, then, a young Alfred Hitchcock realized what a great story this was as well, and how it so naturally fit the themes that he wanted to tackle in his films in the first place; that led to a movie version in the mid-'30s, which like I said was one of the first really big hits of his career, one of the things that led him to Hollywood a few years later and the films he is now much more known for. I have to admit, though, that I have a low tolerance for movies that are over 50 or 60 years in age, precisely because of all the cheesiness that comes with such films -- the ham-fisted acting, the stilted dialogue, the dated hairdos, the non-existent production values. It takes a pretty special film from this period to still hold my legitimate attention as a contemporary moviegoer (see, for example, my review of Fritz Lang's 1927 Metropolis, which is just so visually stunning you can't help but to still be fascinated by it); and Hitchcock's The 39 Steps is unfortunately just not one of those films, especially considering that huge portions of the original story were rewritten in order to appease a mainstream moviegoing crowd. (In the film version, for example, Hannay is saddled with a wisecracking love interest, something completely absent from the original novella.) It's definitely worth checking out if you're a fan of historical films (and by the way is in the public domain too -- you can watch the whole thing for free if you want over at Google Video); for most of you, however, I recommend simply reading the book, which to this day is still a corker of a tale.Out of 10:Book: 8.3Movie: 7.2, or 8.2 for fans of pre-WWII films*And in fact, since it's such an integral part of the plot, it's important before reading The 39 Steps to understand in general terms what caused World War I in the first place. In fact, I can give it to you in a nutshell: Basically, the way all the royal families of Europe kept the peace throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s was through an ultra-elaborate series of international treaties, with a country for example pledging to go to war on behalf of a friendly neighbor, if that neighbor ends up going to war themselves. The thinking, then, was that no individual country would ever declare war against another one under such circumstances, because of that country basically declaring war against half of Europe by doing so; and sure enough, after the assassination of a member of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1914, the retaliation by that empire against the kingdom of Serbia did indeed kick all these complicated treaties into motion, leading eventually to half of Europe fighting the other half of Europe for no particular reason at all, and with a total death toll of 20 million by the time the whole thing was over. The conspiracy behind The 39 Steps relies exactly on such a situation -- the assassination of a minor ambassador, leading to a global war because of all these international treaties -- which is why it's important to understand all this before reading the book.
    • 2/5
      2.75 stars. Contrived and repetitious but fairly entertaining in places. The play's better. ;)
    • 3/5
      Published in 1915, this book is considered one of the earliest spy novels. Robert Hannay has moved from Rhodesia back to London and is becoming bored with routines. One day, his American neighbor, Franklin Scudder, tells Hannay a story about a German spy network that is plotting to steal Great Britain’s naval defense plans. When Scudder is murdered, Hannay decides to flee for fear of becoming the prime suspect. Thus begins Hannay’s wild adventure, which becomes increasingly outlandish. I found it entertaining and worth reading for its contribution to the genre, but it will require a significant suspension of disbelief.
    • 3/5
      An enjoyable yarn about a man on the run.

      While this could easily have been a dated pre-War thriller, its self-consciousness ("I say sir, the story you tell sounds like one of those Haggard novels!") endears it to the modern reader.
    • 5/5
      Loved the book. Action from start to finish. 5 Star book.
    • 4/5
      Richard Hannay has recently returned from South Africas but quickly becomes bored with the shallow life of London. Then he meets an American who has a fanastic tale to tell him. Soon Hannay is on the run and no longer bored.
      An enjoyable thriller. Certainly different from the various film versions I have seen
    • 4/5
      Though it takes place before World War I… it offers insight into the view of what was happening at that time making the tale timeless. With some minor changes, it could easily be a thrilling espionage adventure told in modern day. All books deserve, and should be judged, for their context…. and while most do…we all know that some don't. The fact that this one has a solid four-star average after hundreds of reviews…easily says how much fun this was to read. The book differs from Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation in that there is no love interest for Hannay here… because it simply isn’t needed.
    • 3/5
      A month after reading this one I can't remember that much about it. A man who has just returned to the UK from Africa is approached by another man staying at the same hotel. For no reason at all this man tells him about a planned assassination. When this second man ends up murdered our narrator goes on the run -- from the police and the presumably German spies who don't want anyone to find out about their assassination plans. He starts out on trains, then on foot, by truck and car. Along the way he stays in a small hotel and, later, when injured, in the home of a road worker. He tells everyone his story -- or as much as he knows-- and they believe him and hide him. Eventually he makes his way to London, finds some big wig in the British military, tells him the story and practically gets to run the scheme to catch the spies. Seriously. I was left with the impression that people in 1915 were either incredibly trusting or incredibly naive. I'm glad to be able to check this one off my reading list, but, I didn't like or believe much of it.
    • 1/5
      John Buchan was, according to Christopher Hitchens, "the father of the modern spy thriller". But, as the introduction to this, his most famous novel, explains, he was a writer "of his time". That's code for "bigoted". In a famous passage in this novel -- the conspiracy theory par excellence -- a leading character tells the book's hero that "if you're on the biggest kind of job and are bound to get to the real boss, ten to one you are brought up against a little white-faced Jew in a bath-chair with an eye like a rattlesnake. Yes, sir, he is the man ruling the world just now ..." Stuart Kelly's introduction dismisses this as the ranting of a character which will be dismissed later in the book, but the narrator himself has throw-away lines like "when a Jew shoots himself in the City and there is an inquest, the newspapers usually report that the deceased was 'well-nourished'."It may well have been the basis of a classic Hitchcock film, but this 1915 novel has little by way of plot (basically, the hero is running away from villains, escaping them by a combination of his own brilliance at disguise, and dumb luck). Not convincing, not interesting, and "of its time" in the very worst sense of the word.
    • 4/5
      Although this feels like ‘nothing new’ it’s amazing to think it was all new when it was written in 1915.It’s fun to have read the beginning of a genre.
    • 5/5
      2020 reread via audiobook narrated by Stephen Crossley:
      Despite having read this book before, I was still surprised by how different it is from the Hitchcock classic movie adaptation! Of course, Hitchcock had to add in a romantic subplot which Buchan hadn't had but I kept expecting certain scenes which never occurred. Buchan's plot is actually much more probable (though it still abounds with coincidences that a critic could say were unreasonable).
    • 3/5
      I was expecting more of a thriller, but after a while I stopped worrying about Hannay because the author keeps throwing him exactly what he needs, no matter how improbable.
    • 4/5
      Fast paced mystery. Entertaining. I read it as I enjoyed the Masterpiece Mystery production. However, the diversion of the two stories is significant. Both are enjoyable.
    • 4/5
      Bored Richard Hannay has already had enough of London, after returning from a life abroad. But then a neighbor drops by and Richard's life becomes very exciting, very fast. The coincidences are unbelievable at times in this espionage thriller as Richard becomes embroiled in trying to stop a secret plot to undermine the British war effort as Europe marches towards WW1. Still it was a fun ride as Richard races across Scotland by train, car and on foot as he tries to shake his pursuers and expose the plot.
    • 3/5
      I commend Keegan's introduction to the Penguin Classics edition for not only not containing any spoliers, but for calling out those which do.
    • 3/5
      It’s 1914, and World War I is eminent. Richard Hannay (a Scot) sets up house in London, having returned from Rhodesia. He meets a fearful American spy named Franklin P. Scudder who believes a plot is afoot to assassinate the Greek premier when he visits London. Scudder claims to be following a German spy ring. He allows him to stay with him. Soon two deaths, including Scudder’s occur in the building. Hannay worries he will be next for the assassins, but he must investigate himself, since he is the chief suspect. Hannay pores over Scudder’s notes, once he has broken the cipher. They mention “39 steps.” After being introduced to the Foreign Office by a local aspiring politician, his heroic actions prevent England from divulging secrets to the Germans. I listened to an audio version taken from the Golden Age of Radio with an introduction by Orson Wells and performed by a theatrical company. One had to listen quite carefully over the crackles to hear the soft voices of the actors. The recording quality is quite bad, and I recommend that persons wanting to listen to this one do so sitting in their living room as the original radio broadcasts were heard.
    • 4/5
      The Thirty-Nine Steps is an adventure story and is probably what John Buchan is most known for even though he was a well recognized historian, accepted a peerage as Lord Tweedsmuir and served as a governor-general of Canada. This short adventure thriller is famous for it’s “man-on-the-run” action story and for the many films it has inspired.The story opens with Richard Hannay, an Englishman who grew up in South Africa, finding his life in London rather boring and so is very open to becoming involved in uncovering an anarchist plot when he is approached by a nervous American. This American all too soon turns up dead and left in Hannay’s apartment. Now implicated in murder, Hannay decides to travel to Scotland to hide from both the British police and a very powerful German spy ring until the appropriate authorities can be advised of the situation. The story moves quickly as Hannay relies on the help of various people that he meets in the Scottish highlands and ultimately he turns the tables on the spies by helping to hunt them down.The Thirty-Nine Steps is a very quick read and has the hero dashing around in the heather and peat bogs of the Scottish Highlands for most of the book. Set in the weeks prior to the opening of World War I, the author captures the nationalistic feelings and the political blunders that help to set up this occurrence. Although somewhat dated, I enjoyed this story.
    • 2/5
      I heard this book read as an audio book on the best audio books' classic tales podcast. That's the only thing that made it bearable (check out the podcast it's excellent). Well the mercifully short ending helped. The fact that Hitchcock managed to make this into a fantastic film proves once again that books and their films are as closely related as a man and his fifth cousin twice removed.
    • 4/5
      At the beginning of this book there is a note from the author to a friend: MY DEAR TOMMY You and I have long cherished an affection for that elementary type of tale which Americans call the 'dime novel' and which we know as the 'shocker' -- the romance where the incidents defy the probabilities, and march just inside the borders of the possible. During an illness last winter I exhausted my store of those aids to cheerfulness, and was driven to write one for myself. This little volume is the result, and I should like to put your name on it in memory of our long friendship, in the days when the wildest fictions are so much less improbable than the facts. J.B. And so that is the genesis of one of the first spy novels. It is set in Britain just before World War I. A middle-aged man, Hannoy, has made his fortune in Africa and is living in London and getting thoroughly bored with his new life. Then his sedate existence is overturned when his upstairs neighbour asks for help. He claims to be in fear of his life because he has learned some information about Germany's intentions to start a war. Hannoy allows him to stay in his flat and listens to his tale but is sceptical about it. Then he comes home one night and finds his house guest stabbed to death. He realizes he will be next so he flees to Scotland where he manages to stay one step ahead of German agents and British police by effecting a number of disguises. He has managed to decipher the little black book his guest had always carried with him but he is still unclear as to the event which the spy said would take place on June 15th. The clue is in the phrase "Thirty-nine Steps" and once that is figured out the German plot can be foiled. This reminded me quite a bit of H. Rider Haggard's classic King Solomon's Mines which I read last year. Male-dominated adventure yarn but fun to read.
    • 4/5
      Thoroughly enjoyable and fun from the start. Despite being rather dated and quite predictable, I couldn't put it down. Sadly, the audiobook was very obviously corrupted, so I'm not certain if I indeed got to hear the whole thing or if there were pieces missing, but at least I have an obvious excuse to re-read it!