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_books_are_magic 's review for:

The Thirty-nine Steps by John Buchan
3.0

This was very much what you expect from an adventure crime novel. It's fast-paced and fun. It's also highly implausible which errs on the edge of farcical. All in all though, I can appreciate this novel for what it was, being one of the first to employ the man-on-the-run style plot device.

I enjoy cosy stories like this, much like Sherlock Holmes. Where the sense of place is idyllic and on the whole, all the characters are lovely. This one I didn't enjoy quite as much simply because the story was so outlandish that it lost any sense of authenticity. That isn't a deal breaker in a fiction adventure like this for me though.