Today's reading suggestion: The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan.
Which I blogged about before, but that was before I had actually read it. Having finished it recently, I can now plug it. It is an early XXth century adventure novel and spy thriller, most famous now
for being the source material of not one but two Alfred Hitchcock
movies: The 39 Steps and North by Northwest, which is basically a
modernized and Americanized version of the same plot. It is also the
grandfather of many modern thrillers, good or bad. In it, expat Scot
Richard Hannay comes back from South Africa on the eve of World War 1 to
stumble upon a conspiracy lead by a German spy ring called the Black
Stone. He is also framed for murder and must escape both justice and the
spy ring while traveling across Britain. It's an old fashioned yarn,
often awfully contrived, but it is nevertheless entertaining and it has a
few great moments. Buchan is not a great writer, but he knows how to
set up an atmosphere, whether it's in the Scottish countryside or in the
middle of London. He write just as well as one would expect from a Tory
MP or a future Governor General of Canada.
Saturday 12 May 2018
The grandfather of modern thrillers
Today's reading suggestion: The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan.
Which I blogged about before, but that was before I had actually read it. Having finished it recently, I can now plug it. It is an early XXth century adventure novel and spy thriller, most famous now
for being the source material of not one but two Alfred Hitchcock
movies: The 39 Steps and North by Northwest, which is basically a
modernized and Americanized version of the same plot. It is also the
grandfather of many modern thrillers, good or bad. In it, expat Scot
Richard Hannay comes back from South Africa on the eve of World War 1 to
stumble upon a conspiracy lead by a German spy ring called the Black
Stone. He is also framed for murder and must escape both justice and the
spy ring while traveling across Britain. It's an old fashioned yarn,
often awfully contrived, but it is nevertheless entertaining and it has a
few great moments. Buchan is not a great writer, but he knows how to
set up an atmosphere, whether it's in the Scottish countryside or in the
middle of London. He write just as well as one would expect from a Tory
MP or a future Governor General of Canada.
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1 comment:
I've always meant to read this but just never got around to it. I suspect I may never do so, but it's still on the list.
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