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RICHARD HANNAY

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS (Nov 18, 2002) From 1915, this has dated quite a bit and takes some getting used to, as its narrator is an upper class Scots gentleman who takes imperialism and rigid class structure for granted. But it is a lively, fast-moving thriller that pretty much was the model for literally hundreds of later books and movies. (Alfred Hitchcock and Ian Fleming were strongly influenced by the adventures of Richard Hannay.) John Buchan (1875-1940), the first Baron Tweedsmuir, was quite a guy. While pursuing his career in politics (he was Governor General of Canada), he also found time to write serious, respectable *Literature* like a biography of Cromwell and mainstream stories about Scotland. Luckily for us, he also had a taste for the sort of manly, Empire building adventure stories which still make great reading. His later books starring Richard Hannay (GREENMANTLE, MR STANDFAST, THE THREE HOSTAGES and THE ISLAND OF SHEEP) grew progressively longer and denser. THE THIRTY NINE STEPS, though, is short and brisk, and you reach the last page with a little jolt of surprise.  Richard Hannay as we first meet him is the perfect specimen to have an adventure. A tough, physically fit man in his late thirties, he has made a tidy fortune in South Africa and come back to England to enjoy himself. Only, he finds the pampered life boring and is unbearably restless. Unlike Bulldog Drummond, who in the same situation advertised for excitement, or Simon Templar who took it upon himself to start his own crusade, Hannay stumbles upon his great adventure by accident. On the eve of the Great War, with Europe a tangle of hissing tigers ready to pounce upon each other, Hannay is suddenly given knowledge of a secret spy ring working inside England... the Black Stone. The American agent who passed the cryptic but vital information to Hannay is promptly murdered and our hero finds himself on the run. The police think he killed his guest and the German spies want him for the clue he holds, so Hannay finds himself on at full run, with no clear idea what to do. Alfred Hitchcock filmed this story in 1935 (making quite a few changes) and the concept of an innocent man on the run after being suspected of a crime was something the director would keep going back to in his films.  Most of the story is concerned with Hannay trying to evade both organizations after him, while he figures out what the enigmatic clue "the thirty-nine steps" could possibly mean. The details of life in the Scottish countryside of that era makes a fascinating background (even if I frequently had to stop and look up unfamiliar terms). Despite the fact that there are only two (offscreen) murders, no guns blazing in all directions, and maybe three or four punches thrown, THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS is as engrossing and suspenseful as any of the more rambunctious thrillers that later followed. The final chapter, with Hannay uncertain but determined as he confronts what might be a vicious spy ring or only an innocent country family is so tense you look up after the last page and let out a breath.  Good as the book is (and Buchan developed enormously as a writer in later works; this was only his second effort), it does have some aspects which a modern reader might be uneasy over. There are a few anti-Semitic remarks about world capitalism being run in secret by Jews (although the character making these statements qualifies it by saying, 'Do you wonder? For three hundred years they have been persecuted and this is the return match for the pogroms...")  More interesting and unsettling in a milder way is how Richard Hannay regards the vulgar Scots farmers and laborers as crude, goodhearted, simple folk. He loves them in their place but he is of course made of better stuff, born to rule from the manor. Hannay (and by inference) Buchan are so comfortable with the rigid class distinctions that it takes a while to sink in. This is another trait that Ian Fleming picked up from his childhood reading. Also, the Scots dialogue is rendered phonetically, something that has gone out of style in modern writing. Sometimes it sounds like Martian ("Just take the barry and wheel eneuch metal frae yon quarry doon the road to make anither bing the morn." Got it.) Hannay is likeable enough, though; he earned his fortune by hard work, and he gets through this adventure more by determination and endurance than by cleverness or unusual skills. He's a pretty average guy trying to survive and help his country, which makes him easy to identify with.  One thing that really damaged the spell of the storytelling for me was the heavy use of coincidence. Now, if you enjoy pulp or adventure fiction, you have to accept a certain amount of unlikely events happening by pure chance. But Buchan really piles it on with this book, to the extent that it becomes amusing rather than suspenseful. On the run in the wilds of Scotland, Hannay is saved three times in a row by meeting someone who is exactly set up to provide him with what he needs.  There's the road worker with a hangover who is perfectly willing to switch clothes with a complete stranger and go home, letting the stranger take over his job for the day; an open touring car driven by a nitwit, dawdling by slowly enough that Hannay can simply vault over the side into the passenger seat and hijack the vehicle, with no weapon or initimidation beyond a simple threat of violence; and a scholar's cottage in the wilderness, whose owner is happy to harbor a fugitive from the police and ask questions later. By this point, I imagined Hannay's guardian angels were working in relays to keep him safe.   And when he does get captured by the spies, they lock him in a cellar thoughtfully provided with a cabinet containing flashlights and explosives.... (thanks, guys!) One thing about Richard Hannay (and Buchan) that startled me is that they regarded the Irish as some sort of murderous apelike tribes on the borders of civilization. Prejudice against the Irish has vanished so thoroughly that it's strangely appalling to read about signs that said "No Irish Need Apply". The final confrontation between Hannay and the members of the Black Stone spy ring (or ARE they?) is extremely well-done. Despite his flaws, I like Hannay because he never tries to pretend he isn't frightened or confused during the adventure. He just straightens his tie and does his best. Fleming certainly absorbed many techniques and tricks from these books that he used in the Bond stories. If you are going to continue the series in order, congratulations! You have GREENMANTLE, MR STANDFAST and THE THREE HOSTAGES to enjoy ahead of you. (Hannay also appeared in THE ISLAND OF SHEEP, but I haven't found a copy yet.)  "No paupers, lunatics, vagrants or prostitutes allowed to immigrate".... as I read that sentence, I could hear John Cleese in my mind, saying, "We can produce quite enough of those ourselves, thank you." (I watched altogether too much Monty Python as a young man.)

GREENMANTLE (Dec 16, 2002) From 1916, this was the sequel to the classic THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS, in which John Buchan introduced Richard Hannay. GREENMANTLE is one of the best adventure books ever written, a model which many later writers of spy thrillers followed. (In particular, I can see where Ian Fleming derived a lot of his approach, including his sweep of the action from country to country. James Bond as a character owes a great deal to Hannay.) For a British action story set in this time, the book is remarkably fairminded. There is little of the fanged, subhuman Huns we often find in other thrillers of the period. In his desperate race through wartime Germany, Hannay encounters several decent, helpful German citizens who treat him well and even some of the military men he meets are basically goodhearted folks caught up in a juggernaut that is rolling over them as well. In a remarkable scene, Hannay actually has a few words with the Kaiser himself. Where (in the next war) Hitler would usually be portrayed as an hysterical frothing lunatic, here the German leader is shown as a sad, wornout man "who slept little and whose thoughts rode him like a nightmare." In contrast is one of the book's main villains, Colonel von Stumm, a hulking overbearing Prussian with a shaven head and monocle who embodies all the worst qualities of the militaristic stereotype. ("Here was the German of caricature, the real German, the fellow we were up against.") Hannay mentions that until he met this brute, he wasn't sure that the stereotype existed in real life. Stumm is so hateful and believably vile that one of the most satisfying moments in when Hannay stands up to the much bigger man. ("You infernal cad, I am going to knock the stuffing out of you" he says. All right, Richard!) Although Hannay is the narrator, he's working with a loose team of wildly mismatched spies. There's the American agent John S Blenkiron, a subtle worker, who suffers from a dyspetic stomach; there's Peter Pienaar, a tough old veldt hunter that Hannay knew back in South Africa. And there's Sandy Arbuthnot, patterned to some extent on Lawrence of Arabia. A master of disguise and languages, Sandy has a dozen different identities established throughout the Middle East, with a network on contacts and friends. He seems, in fact, more likely to be the type to be the main hero of the book. But while he has a touch of genius, he is also more vulnerable and susceptible to temptation. Major Richard Hannay gives up his commission to accept a dangerous undercover assignment from his government. There are signs of a new religious uprising in Turkey, the beginning of a new Jehad under a mysterious leader known as Greenmantle, and both Germany and Britain are determined to take advantage of this unrest. Hannay is completely believable as a very human hero. He's brave and resourceful enough to take on the mission, but normal enough to have serious doubts and misgivings. His observations and opinions as he makes his way through Europe to the Middle East have the ring of authenticity and conviction. Part of the appeal of GREENMANTLE is that it is set in an historical period far enough back that it seems fascinating and colorful, but not so lost in antiquity that we can't identify with the situations. The slang of the time is charming and nostalgic (people are "keen on learning" and "it's dogged as does it." There are also a few snatches of Scots that look like Martian to me, but they're meant to be baffling to outsiders.) But it's John Buchan's writing that really deserves credit. His use of vivid descriptions and interior monologues is skillful, he keeps the massive 320 page book roaring smoothly along, and he has the master's touch of revealing just enough to give you an idea of what's coming up, but not enough that you're not curious enough to see how it turns out. The book has a beautiful femme fatale (who actually IS deadly) with her own agenda, enigmatic clues that must be solved, sneaking around the dark alleys of Constantintople, full scale military battles, and enough surprises to keep those pages turning. The big finale would look terrific on a theatre screen if some perceptive producer okayed filming this book. Somewhere on my shelves are copies of THE THREE HOSTAGES and MR STANDFAST, and I definitely will be digging them out.

MR STANDFAST (Aug 11, 2003) From 1919, this was the third in John Buchan's series of Richard Hannay adventures (following the classic THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS and the equally fine GREENMANTLE). To be honest, the first hundred or so pages are pretty slack, trudging through lengthy poetic descriptions of Scottish landscapes and irrelevant encounters with characters we never meet again. But that's the way John Buchan wrote; he was for the most part a serious historian and Novelist. When his thrillers do kick into gear, the skill and depth of his writing give the action a great deal of extra weight and meaning. (I'm just not used to working my way through all that build-up. Perhaps a lifetime of reading brisk pulp stories has ruined me as my teachers always warned would happen). At one point, Hannay himself says, "It was melodrama of the best kind" and I have to agree. The abrupt changes of fortune, the desperate gambits and heroic struggles, even the classic set-up of the leering villain carrying off the pure damsel while the enraged hero rushes to the final confrontation... all seem convincing and urgent in John Buchan's hands. At the very end, MR STANDFAST changes gears again and becomes a straightforward WW I tale (something about which Buchan was uniquely well informed). There's even a helping of pathos as a noble character suffers and meets his fate. Even so, I found MR STANDFAST a slight step down from the first two books in the series. Brigadier General Richard Hannay is once again yanked away from his command in the Great War to deal with an espionage problem, this time pursuing a genuine master of disguise and subterfuge called Moxon Ivery, one of those chameleon villains. (He's actually the Graf von Schwabing.) After a long and tedious prelude spent posing as an anti-war activist (giving Buchan a chance to spend page after page lambasting artistic types he didn't care for), Hannay starts to identify the Boche swine lurking about the Isles and after that, the story perks up and becomes really classic adventure stuff. I am absolutely certain that a young Ian Fleming devoured John Buchan's books. At a crucial moment, with Hannay pinned helplessly in a trap and about to be carted off to Germany for a painful death, the mastermind stops to explain his scheme and give our hero exactly the information he needs to foil it. Goldarn! The James Bond books owe a great many things to Richard Hannay but this is one of the most blatant. The title refers to John Bunyan's PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, which the characters in the story use as a code and which Hannay also keeps referring to as analogies to events in the story. All right, I admit I haven't read PILGRIM'S PROGRESS all the way through (just skipped blithely through it), but that doesn't interfere with appreciating this book. Here is where we meet Mary Lamington (whom we later see save the day in THE THREE HOSTAGES). Already working for Military Intelligence as an undercover agent, Mary is a lovely blonde teenager much younger than Hannay (we realizes he's smitten with her before he seems to). But it's interesting that although he naturally admires her looks, Hannay is absolutely taken with her moral clarity and sharp intelligence. ("The crystal freshness of morning was still there, but I saw how deep the waters were. It was the clean fineness and strength of her that entranced me.") Mary is someone he can trust and admire without doubts, an ally doubly precious in the uncertain game he is forced to play. Another example of a brave, intelligent heroine in a genre often unfairly thought of as featuring nothing but swooning belles. I've come to enjoy the Scots dialect that keeps turning up in Buchan's dialogue; it adds a spice of unfamiliarity, and it never hurts to pick up a dictionary and learn a new word or two. ("Daunder in the gloaming?" "Stroll into the clachan with yuir breeks?" Wait a second...) After awhile, you also start to realize all the details and practices of a rich way of life now gone. Buchan's prejudices flare up here and there. He still has a definite bias against the Irish ("Glasgow's stinkin' nowadays with two things, money and Irish") although most of his dislike seems to come from the fact they haven't entered the war. More startling for a modern reader is the moment when Hannay is at a political lecture. ("And to my joy, one night there was a great buck nigger who had a lot to say about 'Africa and the Africans'. I had a few words with him in Sesutu afterwords, and rather spoiled his visirt.") You can take this any number of ways. Since most of the speakers at these meetings are posers or frauds, it could be that Hannay (raised in South Africa) spoke to the lecturer in a genuine African language and exposed him as a phony. Or it may be (and probably is) that the bloke had some nerve claiming that native Africans deserved to rule their own countries and that Hannay straightened him out sharply. In Buchan's defense, he is remarkably fair-minded for his time, showing the German people and even the German soldiers as normal, decent folk misled by scheming leaders. For 1919, that was pretty daring and it got some criticism for Buchan from many quarters. Even the way he presents the anti-war activists shows him trying to see their viewpoint. Hannay himself doesn't enjoy or glamorize war by any means ("the thousand friends I had lost... the great seas of blood and mountains of sorrow"). In fact, the worst punishment he can devise for the villain is to make him go through the hell he had inflicted on hundreds of thousands; Hannay drags the mastermind to the front lines. This is poetic justice in the most satisfying form I've seen in a book in many years. The biggest misgiving I have about the Richard Hannay books is the convenient coincidences which just about slap you in the face and say, "Accept that one, eh?" On the run, Hannay just happens upon a soldier from his old command who luckily enough is going to be flying a plane right to where our hero needs to go. When being pursued from all directions, Hannay is given everything he needs to escape because (wait for it) a mug swipes his pocket watch and a British agent recognizes the emblem pasted inside that is the token of Her Majesty's Service. He overhears a name that (months later) he finds just happens to be that of a shady tenant of a chateau, near which Hannay's pilot makes a forced landing after being lost in dense fog. This goes on repeatedly; I can usually accept one big blatant coincidence the way one can take a swig of distasteful medicine but Buchan really overdoes it.

THE THREE HOSTAGES (Jan 18, 2003) From 1924, this was the fourth of John Buchan's Richard Hannay books, which are very important in the history of adventure stories and a big influence of everyone from Alfred Hitchcock to Ian Fleming. THE THREE HOSTAGES is not quite up to the best of the series. It doesn't have the tight briskness of THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS or the wide international sweep of the wartime GREENMANTLE, but it's still amazingly good. The strange thing here is that Buchan was usually considered a *literary* author, known for high class biographies and works of art worthy of being taken seriously by The Critics. When he wrote wild thrillers like the Hannay books, it was as if William Faulkner had turned out a Tarzan adventure, or if Kingsley Amis had written a James Bond story (well, actually, he did...) So we have here an over the top story about a sinister conspiracy which uses superhypnotism in its scheme to take over the world, and only one brave Scots secret agent has a chance to stop them. But it's written so deftly, with such a nice command of language and structure, that it's a unique experience. The hostages of the title are three innocents, a youth and girl and a little child, who have been kidnapped by some mysterious conspiracy. The fathers of the hostages are very important men to the British and American governments, and of course the hostages are being held to try to keep the fathers from interfering with the great scheme (whatever it is). Scotland Yard and the Government's best minds are getting nowhere, and in desperation, Richard Hannay is dragged into the case very much against his will. (Buchan's skill is in evidence here, as you completely believe Hannay wants to be left alone but is coerced in taking the assignment by playing on his emotions.) The pulpish element turns up early. The kidnappers are so arrogant and confident that they have actually had the nerve to provide a clue... an enigmatic little poem full of bits about midnight suns and blind spinners. (The Riddler is nothing new.) With only this obscure basis to go on, Hannay gets to work. He's no deductive genius or superman, but he is dogged and determined to succeed. One thing you have to bear in mind is that this was not meant to be a single issue of a monthly series, plotted to fit in 124 pages, with plenty of one-sentence paragraphs. This is a big solid no-fooling BOOK that weighs in at 350 pages of dense material. It does take a while to pick up steam, and it does drag quite a bit in spots (there were a few times where I felt like saying, "Get on with it"), but it builds up great suspense in the second half and finishes with a skillfully described duel in the mountains of Scotland that is completely engrossing. The main villain, Dominck Medina, is a masterful creation. On the surface, he is a handsome, charming, charismatic man who is obviously headed for the top in political circles; but actually, he is a vile nihilistic mastermind of the worst type, who has learned superhypnosis from an Eastern guru named Kharama. Medina is building a network of brainwashed slaves, some of whom have had their memories destroyed and rebuilt. This is the pulpish element which stands out from an otherwise realistic spy thriller. Ian Fleming's Hugo Drax in MOONRAKER owes a bit to Medina; he's also a robust, overwhelming national hero who is (on the surface) working to better the nation but who in reality is the bad guy. Even when he's in a desperate struggle against Medina, Hanny still has mixed feelings about the fellow. One fascinating detail is that the three hostages are not necessarily tied up in some cellar somewhere. Because of Medina's powers, they may very well be working at some job under a new name, with completely fake memories they themselves believe... making them very hard to find, indeed. Some of the regular supporting cast turns up again, including that breezy master of disguise, Sandy Arbuthnot. And Hannay's sweet demure wife Mary is determined and toughminded enough to come to London on her own and start working on the case, simply because she is so concerned about the little boy hostage. She's no amusing bungler who mucks things up either, but fully competent and completely deserving the complete faith Hannay has in her. In fact, in the darkest moments, she turns out to be the real hero of the book. Much of what makes this story interesting is the time and place in which it was written. 1924 is long enough ago that it seems almost like reading about the ancient world. Aside from the men's clubs with their leather chairs and cigars and ironed newspapers to the mention of a building dating back to the "American War" to the arrival of an assistant in a rented Sopwith (no, it's not Snoopy), Hannay also takes for granted that most people worth knowing have live-in servants and that there is still a concept called decency that is worth defending. There are also frequent digs against the Irish ("murderous hobledhoys") which suggest that Buchan himself had an active dislike against them. At one point, too, Hannay is annoyed at sitting through a jazz session ("a nigger band, looking like monkeys in uniform, pounded out some barbarous jingle"), so if you're offended by an occasional racist comment, be warned. The distasteful references are sparse though, and shouldn't be enough to deter a fan of adventure fiction from trying this book.