Product Description

Contains: Island of Sheep, Three Hostages, Mr Hostages, Mr Standfast, The 39 Steps.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9005 in Books
• Published on: 1993-02-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 1152 pages

About the Author
John Buchan (1875-1940) was born in Perth, Scotland and educated at Oxford where he published five books and won several awards, including one for poetry. He went on to be a barrister, a member of parliament, a soldier, a publisher, a historical biographer, and - in 1935 - he became the Govenor-General of Canada. Today he is best remembered as the author of his perennially popular adventure novels

Customer Reviews

an omnibus edition of classic page-turning suspense
As its title suggests, this edition brings together in one volume all the adventures of John Buchan's hero, from his first appearance in The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915) to his swan-song in The Island of Sheep (1936). Here is the perfect book for those who may have met Richard Hannay in his first and most famous outing - either in print or in Hitchcock's famous movie - and would like to follow his subsequent adventures. The Thirty-Nine Steps is often regarded as the first modern spy story (with the possible exception of Erskine Childers' The Riddle of the Sands - also worth a look), and its breathless pace as its narrator is first pursued by and then pursues a network of German spies against the backdrop of the First World War, remains as effective today as when it was written. The two following books in the series, Greenmantle (1916)and Mr Standfast (1919) also pit Hannay against the might of the Kaiser (he even meets him on one occasion while posing as a pro-German Boer...), taking him across Europe and the Near East. We are also intoduced to his comrades-in-arms: multi-lingual Scottish laird and master of disguise, Sandy Arbuthnot; larger-than-life American industrialist Blenkiron; and Hannay's future wife, the feisty Mary Lamington. The final two books, The Three Hostages (1924) and the Island of Sheep are set after the War, mainly in Britain, and Hannay's adversaries this time are master criminals rather than spies, but the page-turning suspense is every bit as intense, as Hannay races against the clock to bring the malefactors to book... Hannay is a very likeable hero, more complex than the "stiff upper lip" stereotype might suggest. In many ways, he resembles the central characters of Dick Francis's racing thrillers. Like them, Hannay is no intellectual, but he is highly intelligent and has a healthy disrespect for gung-ho heroics. He is, moreover, a perceptive observer of the natural world, and brings a wry - and infectious - sense of humour to his study of human foibles. All in all, John Buchan's "shockers" (as their author called his Hannay stories) deserve a much wider audience and this Penguin omnibus edition is thus to be applauded.

Marvellous!
I had no idea there were more Buchan novels beyond 39 Steps and only discovered the rest by accident. What a happy find! I am writing a fairly contemporaneous novel and thought this collection would make good research material, but I have to confess I haven't done much key-pounding since I bought it. All the tales are equally deserving of five stars but the descriptions of battle in Mr Standfast are quite outstanding. It's almost like being there, and the end, though terribly melodramatic, is very affecting. Even the endless improbable coincidences seem perfectly acceptable in this sort of writing. Yes, there is racism, homophobia, xenophobia, class snobbery, you name it, but somehow it all seems terribly innocent, even comical, to modern eyes and really doesn't matter. Just don't go calling anyone a 'kaffir' in modern South Africa or they'll lock you up!

A chap for all seasons
These books are a great read; not too deep, great thrillers and set the tone of the period perfectly. All we need now is someone brave enough to make a film of "Greenmantle"!