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likecymbeline 's review for:
The Thirty-Nine Steps
by John Buchan
I don't remember where I picked up my little copy of The 39 Steps, only that it is orange and wallpapery with the title printed on it's binding and no difference between the front and back cover which means I opened it upside-down a dozen times. It's unusual for me not to remember where I bought a book. I'm going to pretend that it was placed in my pocket by a covert agent and that I forgot the incident.
This reminded me of [b:The Prisoner of Zenda|54492|The Prisoner of Zenda|Anthony Hope|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1356449081s/54492.jpg|2661176] in that it made an excellent bus read, the chapters being of a breezy and mostly-uniform length, with an adventure escalating and resolving over and over. A rise of tension, a complication, then a sigh of relief as Richard Hannay makes it out again. Some might see this as predictable, but personally I think it's a virtue, charmingly consistent of the genre. We're not reading this because it can be believed, but because we want to see our hero win the game of wits and get through by the skin of his teeth over and over.
Is Hannay the most compelling lead? Not sure. I kind of liked his insouciance, his boredom. I was sometimes reminded of Conway in [b:Lost Horizon|2978|Lost Horizon|James Hilton|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1432440004s/2978.jpg|1180015], a book which meant much to me when I was younger. There are other Hannay books, and I might give [b:Greenmantle|161000|Greenmantle (Richard Hannay #2)|John Buchan|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1314968556s/161000.jpg|688233] a spin to see how/if he develops at all as he goes on.
This reminded me of [b:The Prisoner of Zenda|54492|The Prisoner of Zenda|Anthony Hope|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1356449081s/54492.jpg|2661176] in that it made an excellent bus read, the chapters being of a breezy and mostly-uniform length, with an adventure escalating and resolving over and over. A rise of tension, a complication, then a sigh of relief as Richard Hannay makes it out again. Some might see this as predictable, but personally I think it's a virtue, charmingly consistent of the genre. We're not reading this because it can be believed, but because we want to see our hero win the game of wits and get through by the skin of his teeth over and over.
Is Hannay the most compelling lead? Not sure. I kind of liked his insouciance, his boredom. I was sometimes reminded of Conway in [b:Lost Horizon|2978|Lost Horizon|James Hilton|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1432440004s/2978.jpg|1180015], a book which meant much to me when I was younger. There are other Hannay books, and I might give [b:Greenmantle|161000|Greenmantle (Richard Hannay #2)|John Buchan|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1314968556s/161000.jpg|688233] a spin to see how/if he develops at all as he goes on.