A review by mescalero_at_bat
The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan

4.0

hard to see this one objectively. the film alfred hitchcock made from the book is one of my very favorite movies and maybe my favorite hitchcock film, so it's hard not to see the opening of the story, for example, as clunky and taking too long to get underway. i like all the things hitchcock did to make the story more interesting - even something as simple as switching the opening spy, who is murdered, to a woman changes the stakes and draws me in more.

but the book is otherwise very lean and does a lot in a few pages - it's just that i couldn't get the film out of my head and couldn't silence the voice that kept say, "no, that's all wrong!"