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andrewpollard 's review for:
The 39 Steps
by John Buchan
Some unconnected thoughts:
- Richard Hannay is the cleverest cloggs in all of Britain and every landed gentleman in the country is absolutely desperate to tell him how great he is.
- On maybe fifteen different occasions Hannay muses something to the effect of "I'd always had a natural talent for the precise task that will move the plot forward here". On maybe fifteen more it's "and then everyone just believed me".
- At no point had I any idea what the enemy plan was. I don't know who to blame for this.
- I have never encountered a luckier man in any media. Wherever he steps, gullible, kind-hearted, trustworthy drunkards with cousins in high office fall at his feet. Every guess he makes across the entire book is correct, even ones like "Germans always stick to their plans".
- John Buchan adores dudes. So much of this book is fellas hashing it out and commenting on how respectable each other are in the process. The words "she" and "her" appear maybe ten times apiece and never in relation to named characters.
- We're reminded as nauseum of how dastardly intelligent Hannay's enemies are, even after we've seen them lock him in a sideroom and drive off for two hours without even bothering to establish that said room doesn't, you know, contain a cupboard full of dynamite.
- Policing at the turn of the century must've been wild. At two different times in this one character tells another "Aha! I finally have you!" and the other one just lies and says "I've never met you before, I don't know what you're talking about" and it??? works???
- "Four or five of the cleverest men living" meet in a secret location during a terrorist alert to discuss government secrets in the interest of preventing international war, and don't notice that one of them is GERMAN AND ALSO A TOTALLY DIFFERENT MAN TO THE FAMOUS MILITARY HERO THEY WERE EXPECTING?!
- Chapter VIII consists almost entirely of Hannay wandering around unoccupied, bumping into a man whose car he'd stolen, breaking the man's teeth, assaulting a police officer, and running away. His motivation for all of this is boredom and not wanting to waste time explaining himself.
- The final two pages of this are remarkably terrible.
- By the end of the book, Hannay has taken charge commanding a small band of armed men to attack and capture the terrorists or whatever. This is despite the fact that two of his allies are a war minister and an army general, respectively, and Hannay is just some guy. The explanation given is that "I was used to rough jobs, and these eminent gentlemen were too clever not to see it". Right, cool, okay.
- I saw a review that described this as "as bad as it is readable". Here, here.
- Richard Hannay is the cleverest cloggs in all of Britain and every landed gentleman in the country is absolutely desperate to tell him how great he is.
- On maybe fifteen different occasions Hannay muses something to the effect of "I'd always had a natural talent for the precise task that will move the plot forward here". On maybe fifteen more it's "and then everyone just believed me".
- At no point had I any idea what the enemy plan was. I don't know who to blame for this.
- I have never encountered a luckier man in any media. Wherever he steps, gullible, kind-hearted, trustworthy drunkards with cousins in high office fall at his feet. Every guess he makes across the entire book is correct, even ones like "Germans always stick to their plans".
- John Buchan adores dudes. So much of this book is fellas hashing it out and commenting on how respectable each other are in the process. The words "she" and "her" appear maybe ten times apiece and never in relation to named characters.
- We're reminded as nauseum of how dastardly intelligent Hannay's enemies are, even after we've seen them lock him in a sideroom and drive off for two hours without even bothering to establish that said room doesn't, you know, contain a cupboard full of dynamite.
- Policing at the turn of the century must've been wild. At two different times in this one character tells another "Aha! I finally have you!" and the other one just lies and says "I've never met you before, I don't know what you're talking about" and it??? works???
- "Four or five of the cleverest men living" meet in a secret location during a terrorist alert to discuss government secrets in the interest of preventing international war, and don't notice that one of them is GERMAN AND ALSO A TOTALLY DIFFERENT MAN TO THE FAMOUS MILITARY HERO THEY WERE EXPECTING?!
- Chapter VIII consists almost entirely of Hannay wandering around unoccupied, bumping into a man whose car he'd stolen, breaking the man's teeth, assaulting a police officer, and running away. His motivation for all of this is boredom and not wanting to waste time explaining himself.
- The final two pages of this are remarkably terrible.
- By the end of the book, Hannay has taken charge commanding a small band of armed men to attack and capture the terrorists or whatever. This is despite the fact that two of his allies are a war minister and an army general, respectively, and Hannay is just some guy. The explanation given is that "I was used to rough jobs, and these eminent gentlemen were too clever not to see it". Right, cool, okay.
- I saw a review that described this as "as bad as it is readable". Here, here.