The Thirty-Nine Steps

What It's About

London, May 1914. Richard Hannay, a Scottish mining engineer recently returned from Rhodesia, is bored with city life. Then a neighbour, a freelance spy named Scudder, tells him of a plot to assassinate a foreign statesman and to hand Britain's naval secrets to the enemy. When Scudder is found murdered, Hannay is the obvious suspect. He flees north to the Scottish moors, pursued by the police and by the conspirators, and has to work out what Scudder's coded notebook means before it is too late.

Key Concepts

The novel is a founding example of the "man on the run" thriller: an ordinary, resourceful amateur caught up in events far bigger than himself, with the pace of a chase and very little padding. It captures the spy fever of the years before the First World War, when British readers feared hidden enemies and invasion. It also makes the Scottish landscape part of the action, with heather, hill and remote farmhouse serving as both refuge and danger. Modern readers should note that the early conspiracy theories voiced in the book reflect the casual prejudices of the period, including an antisemitic trope, and the story itself ends up treating them with some irony.

About the Author

John Buchan (1875–1940) was a Scottish writer, lawyer and politician. He worked in public life and wartime propaganda, and later served as Governor General of Canada, taking the title Lord Tweedsmuir. He wrote this book while recovering from illness during the First World War, calling it a "shocker": a tale where the events are just short of the incredible.