Introduction

World War One, from its own perspective, is an odd period of time, full of dramatic irony, tragedy, and dark humor. The three novels I’ll be briefly discussing today are classics of the era and justly so; I have my quibbles with them, but at the end of the day, Buchan’s skill as an author is evident. Buchan, head of intelligence for Britain during late World War One, pioneered the spy genre; 39 Steps itself is regarded as one of the progenitors thereof, meriting a much-acclaimed Alfred Hitchcock adaptation in 1935 (which I have not seen). If you’re a fan of spy fiction or even just suspenseful historical fiction, I highly recommend giving 39 Steps, Greenmantle, and Mr. Standfast a try.

Do please take care with italicized sections, as they contain mild spoilers.

General Overview

As a series, these three books display Buchan’s flair for certain types of antagonists, his skill at maintaining high stakes, and a peculiar (to me, at least) method of writing the finale, all while establishing a solid main character and a vivid gallery of side characters, recurring and momentary.

Buchan has a true flair for creating a certain category of antagonist. He favors the mastermind archetype (fitting for the genre), and he carries this archetype out with excellence. To the reader’s eyes, these antagonists are almost inhuman, possessed of indomitable wills, charisma, and a genius beyond dispute. They have, indeed, an aura which might be termed divine; you really believe that they are capable of shaping the world by their intellect, backed as it is by an unwavering force of will. Yet at the same time they are men and women. [The villain of Greenmantle] is a Superman in the classical sense, but still possesses an undeniable vulnerability to a single other. Graf von Schwabing, a part of the third story’s cadre of villainry, possesses an undeniable terror, a near omnipresence in his malice for which the first book’s antagonist was merely the prototype. These characters are terrible, like heroes of legend, but like those heroes they are also men¹.

To go with these antagonists, Buchan crafts narratives which have high stakes. In all three, the question of the narrative is this: will Hannay succeed, or will Britain fall? Too many times, when such high stakes are present, the reader doesn’t really care. Buchan, though, while he may not get the reader to care for Britain itself, keeps the tension consistently high by involving us in Hannay’s struggle, making us empathize both with Hannay’s perception of the stakes and his personal relationship with the villain- admiration, repugnance, hate, fear, etc. We really feel that success or failure matters, that Hannay’s struggles are warranted, and we triumph when victory trumpets sound.

This third point is honestly almost as much a point of writerly jealousy as anything else, and true for Greenmantle and Mr. Standfast alone. The endings of those two books are peculiar, in my opinion, because the main antagonist(s) are defeated… and then the story spend more time to actually finish the plot, to reach a final climax. This phenomenon would be easily enough understood if the villain’s defeat were attended by a drop off in the tension, but in truth, while the quality of the tension alters, the quantity does not. The antagonist is out of the picture, rendered irrelevant if not utterly ended, and tension ratchets up yet again. The plot is still going, it tells me when I read, and the end is still unsure. Has Hannay succeeded? Did his efforts fail, for all his apparent victory? The answer is still emphatically up in the air (albeit the spoilsport reader may predict the result). This paragraph is true particularly in Mr. Standfast, given the persistent foreshadowing of death which attends that narrative.

The characters which Buchan crafts in these stories deserve, in all honesty, more space than I’m giving them here, in my somewhat informal review. Richard Hannay, while hardly likely to bring the reader to tears, is a thoroughly solid protagonist, a man in heart and deed. He’s a mixture of experienced and novice which makes perfect sense, glued together by a very English outlook on the world, a slowly maturing outlook on the future, a healthy measure of daring-do, and a talent for working out to the end of his line, then stretching just that little bit farther, however much it hurts. He’s flawed, but in a way I honestly wish modern stories would learn from: Hannay is imperfect, but he remains, despite his perfections, a man in character, not just biology.

The momentary side character Buchan crafts are also memorable and, while not overly complicated, perfect for the parts they play in the narrative. 39 Steps in particular has multiple characters who appear for one, maybe two, chapters and who still pop into mind readily (even if, in my usual way, I’m lost as to their actual names), all of whom play a natural and essential role in that narrative. Greenmantle and Mr. Standfast deal more in recurrent characters, ones which show up in large segments of the narrative or in future books, but even here the two maiden aunts Hannay temporarily boards with, his impression of the inhabitants of Wakefield, the old farmer he quarters with in the Highlands, all possess a humanity which paints of them a picture you can sympathize with out of your own experience.

His recurrent characters, meanwhile, are often brilliant (and always serviceable at least- see: Bullivant, Ms. Lamington), though they tend to come into their own only in particular parts or books. Greenmantle introduces two such, Peter Pienaar (referenced but not present in 39 Steps) and Sandy Arbuthnot, both of whom are true gems; Mr. Standfast contributes its own, in the form of Launcelot Wake. These men form important parts of the narrative, living impressions upon it, all with their own vivid characters and understandings of the world, all woven so deeply into the plot as to be inextricable. I must confess a certain fondness for Arbuthnot in particular; I did, after all, name a character after him in Why Ought I to Die?

Before I get to short assessments of the individual books, I’d like to caution you on a few elements of Buchan’s writing- not flaws, in most cases, but things modern readers should be aware of. First, he wrote in the early 1900s, and his style reflects that. Don’t expect him to try and put you through sensory overload or to engage in involved psycho-analysis of his characters after the style of a more modern author. If you’ve read books from this era- the Wimsey novels, particularly Gaudy Night or Murder Must Advertise, or Narnia- you’ll have a grasp of roughly how he approaches this. Second, Buchan had the reservations of his time regarding a certain word we regard as a deeply offensive racial slur. He doesn’t seem to be racist to me, and he uses the word in a purely factual context, but if you can’t bear reading the N-word (which modern sensibilities prevent me from even writing here in full), you’re in trouble.

Third, Buchan was a Brit and worked for the British government. This leads to a certain point of view on World War One which sweats dramatic irony every time he gets into his understanding of the war. The characters explicitly regard Germany as responsible for the war and explicitly consider Britain to be the side of civilization. Buchan doesn’t play into the more extreme (‘babes-on-bayonets’) propaganda², but he does regard Germany and Germans as of a certain abnormal, inadmirable type. In all honesty, some of the stereotypes he expresses are not without foundation, at least from what I’ve seen in history, and he does not carry it anywhere near the point of dehumanization, always regarding the foe as men, albeit men of less civilization and, in some cases, virtue, men often capable of being truly noble (e.g. Gaudian in Greenmantle). Unless you’re hyper-sensitive to anti-German sentiment, you shouldn’t have any issue at all. For me, the greater stumbling block (and source of slightly hysterical merriment) was his complimentary opinion of Woodrow Wilson³.

Fourth, and most gravely, Buchan’s theology is typical early 1900s, which is to say, not very good and not horrible (not post-modern) either. Hannay and Blenkiron (an important secondary character) do appeal to God and to Providence on occasion, clearly placing their faith there, but with a strong and stated undercurrent of ‘God helps those as helps themselves’. Insofar as it goes, it’s not obnoxious; many of the statements and allusions are perfectly orthodox, if sparse. They clearly live and function in a society steeped in Christianity, it’s just that the metaphorical tea bag has grown stale. I personally had little issue understanding and moving past it; if I can read a Roman Catholic’s novels, I can read Buchan’s.

Individual Reviews

Now for the individual assessments. While they aren’t italicized, they do contain spoilers. If you’re already intrigued, go read them now; then see if you agree with my opinions.

39 Steps

In 39 Steps, Richard Hannay, fresh from South Africa and champing at the bit for something to do, encounters a bit of information- and a murder- which forces him on the run, with a time limit hanging over his head before Britain’s safety is irreparably compromised. The format is (as befits its initially serialized nature) highly episodic, with each chapter being a partially isolated story which progresses the main plot.

This is the first in the series, and it shows. While not notably flawed, it’s the least of the three stories. Simply put, what it does, it does well, but it doesn’t try to do nearly as much as its sequels (therefore accomplishing less). Nevertheless, it’s a competent and engaging story, providing a strong start for Richard Hannay, as well as recurring character Archie Roylance.

Greenmantle

Greenmantle follows Hannay’s second adventure as he traipses into mid-World War One Germany on a long-term infiltration mission. He’s on the elusive tail of a mysterious plan which will, if left unchecked, spell the ruin of the British War effort and British Empire in one fell stroke. In my opinion, Greenmantle is the best of the three. The plot is strong, coherent and tense and alive. The The depiction of setting is evocative of precisely the requisite characteristics. As for the characters, Richard Hannay is in fine fettle. Sandy Arbuthnot shows up, in a lesser role than in the post-war books but a strong character nonetheless, giving a foretaste of his excellence in Courts of the Morning⁴. In this book too we meet Peter Pienaar, an old hunter from South Africa with a consistent effect on the plot of all three books, whether he’s at a distance or not, and one of Buchan’s finest creations. The two main villains in this story, Col. Stumm and his cohort (whose name is too much of a spoiler to include), are, in their own ways, excellent. They both possess an undeniable menace and provide a fine fire to display the mettle of the protagonists within.

I must give a special mention to the ending of this story. I have rarely felt as elated about a story’s ending as this one, and I’m fairly certain my heart was pounding. It’s a 10/10 experience, at least for me, even on re-read.

While you shouldn’t read it before 39 Steps, if you’re only going to read one of these books, read Greenmantle (then go read Courts of the Morning).

Mr. Standfast

Mr. Standfast sends Hannay into a series of deadly perils once more, starting in rural England, where he goes on the hunt for a deadly foe, for a spy whose tendrils have reached so deep into government as to promise destruction for Britain in its entirety if he goes uncaught. The book delivers on this premise beautiful and is a strong contender (though not the ultimate winner) for the top ranking. The antagonist is, as usual, excellent; the tension is ratcheted ever higher throughout (most of) the story; the characters are impeccably written (albeit not always to my taste). The tension is all the higher for Buchan’s quite sincere foreshadowing of a significant death, a threat to ‘the best of us’, in Ms. Lamington’s words, a threat he carries out with aplomb. The ending of this story should not be underestimated; while I did not experience the same level of emotional elation I felt at the end of Greenmantle, is came a close second, delivering melancholy and triumph in the same swift blow after a seemingly long season of near-calamity.

This book, in my estimate, has one main flaw. After the first portion of the book, after the big twist which ratchets the tension higher and reframes the previous narrative, there’s a sudden drop off. Hannay becomes almost irrelevant to the late middle game of the story, which goes on in the background, outside of our knowledge. While I’m making it sound worse than it is, there really and truly is a drop off in the plot’s tension and integrity in that section, one which the ending, amazing as it is, only partially makes up for.

If you liked either of the other two, read Mr. Standfast. It may not be my favorite story, but it’s a solid book and well worth your time. For extra bonus points, find the only time (to my knowledge) this series ever references Mormonism⁵.

Conclusion

Overall, this is a series I highly recommend reading 39 Steps, Greenmantle, and Mr. Standfast. Don’t stop there either: Buchan wrote three more novels in the series, including one in which Hannay barely appears (oddly enough, my favorite^4.1). All of them are worth your time, for the plot and characters alike, from The Island of Sheep to Courts of the Morning.

God bless.

Footnotes

1 – I must note that I’ve extolled one particular type of villain, a type Buchan undoubtedly favors. He does not, however, limit himself to these: while all three books, to greater or lesser extent, exist in the sway of such antagonists, they possess as a rule their own group of exceptional villains, including one, Col. Stumm, who is arguably of equal importance with the mastermind and is of equal menace and vividness, cast in a different mold.

2 – I hear America tried a similar story about Iraq in the recent past.

3 – Woodrow Wilson, one of the three worst presidents in history, alongside FDR and Lincoln (the definite first place for Worst Ever). And yes, I’m including Biden in the ‘not quite as bad’ category, though he could someday join the exclusive ‘worst ever’ group, depending on the future’s verdict.

4 – And don’t be offended, if you’re Mormon. (4.1)

5 – Arbuthnot’s role in Courts of the Morning, specifically, inspired Sandy’s name in Why Ought I to Die?