How far is Winnipeg from Montreal?

The answer is 1424 miles. At least according to Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps. Something we learn on the very first scene, set in a music-hall. In the movie adaptation, Richard Hannay is no longer a Scottish returning to the UK from South Africa, but a Canadian, probably because John Buchan who of course wrote the original novel was then General Governor of Canada. It felt strange and actually quite pleasant hearing my city being mentioned (I mean Montreal of course, not Winnipeg) at the start of the film, and in a Hitchcock movie on top of that.

A bloodthirsty cover

I blogged before (here and there) about The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan, one of the classic spy thrillers and adventure stories I discovered last year, after wanting to read it for quite a while. It was one of the best literary discoveries I made, the kind I wished I had found years before, when I was say a young teenager and this was the kind of stuff I used to love reading. Long story short, I made a reading recommendation for the novel on social media and the wife of one of my wife's cousins shared this picture of her own edition of The Thirty-Nine Steps, with this very bloodied cover. And this was a children's edition she read when she was nine! She pondered: "I think the parameters of children’s stories must have been wider then!" I agree, both with the statement and with the principle: I am all for a bloody/bloodied cover to attract children to classics. And what she said deserves to be a great unknown line. As for the cover itself, one has to admire that it is as elegant as it is violent.

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.

The 39 Steps

You were wondering maybe what I bought with my five pounds voucher from the local bookshop. Or maybe you couldn't care less, but I will tell you anyway: three books, among them The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan. I read Buchan before and, while I was not overly impressed and found him a bit dated, I enjoyed it enough so decided to give his work another go. Also, I was always curious about this novel of his in particular. It had numerous adaptations, direct or indirect, including this one, which I saw, one by Alfred Hitchcock which I did not see, and I know it was an indirect inspiration for North By Northwest, which I love. In any case, I enjoy adventure novels and spy thrillers so should at least get some fun from this book.