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Charles Bennett adapted the novel to the screen and Ian Hay wrote the dialogue. They took a Buchan framework and turned it into an entertaining and exciting movie. I recently rewatched The 39 Steps (1935) during one of the Hitchcock weekends on TCM which made me that much more interested in reading the book that inspired the movie. Most of the ...
- The Thirty-Nine Steps
6. The 39 Steps 5. Hound of the Baskervilles 4. Kidnapped 3....
- This Review
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- The Thirty-Nine Steps
- The Thirty-Nine Steps: Title
- The Thirty-Nine Steps: Logline
- The Thirty-Nine Steps: Plot Summary
- The Thirty-Nine Steps: Alternative Cover
- The Thirty-Nine Steps: Analysis
- The Thirty-Nine Steps: My Verdict
- The Thirty-Nine Steps: The Movies
- Want to Read It?
- Agree? Disagree?
The title references the Goal archetype. The protagonist’s goal is to discover what ‘the thirty-nine steps’ are. Referencing one of the archetypes of the story in the title is a classic title generation technique. (For more on titles, see How to Choose a Title For Your Novel)
Just before the First World War, a Scottish adventurer finds a dead man in his flat, murdered by a German spy ring. The prime suspect for the murder, he goes on the run, and must evade capture, clear his name and save his country. (For more on loglines see The Killogator Logline Formula)
It is 1914, just before the outbreak of World War One. Richard Hannay returns to London, having made his fortune in Africa. Hannay meets a man who claims to be investigating a German spy ring known as the Black Stone. Hannay lets the man hide in his flat, but later finds him murdered. He fears the Black Stone will come for him next, as the murdered...
The iconic image of The Thirty-Nine Stepsis the man on the run. I loved the “staring in to the sun” feel of the silhouette and the lens flare. I thought reversing out the title balanced a cover that was bottom heavy otherwise, because of the plainness of the background. (For more on designing novel covers see How to design a book cover).
Plot
The Thirty-Nine Steps was the prototype of the ‘conspiracy’ sub-genre of the spy thriller (see Spy Novel Plots). Six Days of the Condor and North By Northwestboth follow the Conspiracy plot formula pioneered by The Thirty-Nine Steps.
Narrative Drive
Reading the plot summary above, it’s clear that The Thirty-Nine Stepsrelies mostly on fast pace to hold the reader’s interest. John Buchan wrote originally The Thirty-Nine Steps for serial publication in Blackwood’s Magazine and shows that origin in being only novella length – around thirty thousand words. The thing with serials is things have to happen. Each chapter has a physical or mental problem for Hannay to solve and ends in a cliffhanger; the narrative drive is relentless. Curiously, t...
Credibility
Hannay’s miraculous ability to escape from impossible situations through coincidence, the intervention of previously unmentioned people, and pure luck makes it hard to take his jeopardy seriously. Buchan himself did not regard his ‘shockers’ as his best work, and also wrote non-fiction and more literary novels. The writing is a hell of a lot better than the hackneyed prose of William Le Queuxthough. Of course, the language and the character’s attitudes are from a bygone age; John Buchan wrote...
Hannay’s ability to escape traps through pure luck stretches credibility to breaking point for the modern reader. However, with its huge narrative drive, The Thirty-Nine Steps showed the way the spy thriller had to develop. It remains a fun, quick read and well worth an afternoon’s attention.
The Thirty-Nine Stepsis a perennial favourite for movie adaptations, and producers have dramatised it many times for film, television, radio and theatre. The most famous adaptation is Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 version. Hitchcock took the original conspiracy thriller and turned it into a romantic comedy-thriller. He has Hannay thrown together with, an...
The Thirty-Nine Steps novel is available at Project Gutenberg here. The Hitchcock movie version is available on Amazon US here, and Amazon UK here.
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The Thirty-Nine Steps is a 1915 adventure novel by the Scottish author John Buchan, first published by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh. It was serialized in All-Story Weekly issues of 5 and 12 June 1915, and in Blackwood's Magazine (credited to "H. de V.") between July and September 1915, before being published in book form in October of that year.
- John Buchan
- 1915
A few years ago I re-read his The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), which was written in the midst of World War I, and what he called a “shocker”—we would call it a “thriller.”. It is a quick read in the edition I read, the Oxford World’s Classics edition. The hero, Richard Hannay, a South African, would go on to feature in a number of ...
When he finally did attach his name, he termed it neither a spy novel nor a crime novel. Instead, it was a “shocker.”. Truthfully, The Thirty-Nine Steps was not really any more shocking than many of the previous novels Buchan had published, but it featured two notable exceptions. The first was the nature of the hero, Richard Hannay.
The Thirty-Nine Steps, an early spy thriller, was published by Scottish author John Buchan in 1915. It was the first of five books to feature protagonist Richard Hannay. Alfred Hitchcock adapted the story to film in 1935, emphasizing the thriller elements and changing most of the secondary characters. A theatrical version, which drew from ...
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The Thirty-Nine Steps was written by John Buchan and published in the year 1915. The book was subsequently made into a film, with several different adaptations. The novel begins as Richard Hannay ...
