John Buchan's suspense novel, The Thirty Nine Steps, published in 1915, is a classic spy and pursuit novel. Mining engineer Richard Hannay, having made a modest fortune, has recently returned to England from Africa and is feeling bored and disenchanted with life in London. Longing for adventure, he takes in a neighbor, Franklin Scudder, who regales him with a tale of a conspiracy to assassinate an important public figure who is due to arrive in London in three weeks, and who is soon after found stabbed to death in Hannay's apartment. Knowing that both the police and the mysterious people who murdered the man will soon be pursuing him, Hannay find's Scudder's notebook and takes off for Scotland to elude them and to decode the notebook, from which he learns that the real plot is to steal England's naval secrets.
The chapters in the book were originally published as a magazine serial, which enhances the suspense. It's a classic, but suspense novels aren't to my taste.
Grade: B-.
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