Showing results for title "The Thirty-Nine Steps", by author "John Buchan" in Traditional Detectives

Richard Hannay, Buchan's hero in this 1915 thriller, stumbles across a dark plot to attack England by the German Reich (of World War I vintage) but has to flee when his discovery becomes known. He then engages in several hot pursuits and narrow, if theatrical, escapes, but all's well that ends well.

Richard Hannay is bored—until his neighbor shows up with a wild story of espionage, an impending war, and a mysterious organization called the 39 Steps. Hours later, the man is dead, and Hannay is the prime suspect. Framed for murder and hunted by both the police and a deadly network of spies, Hannay races across the Scottish countryside, decoding clues, dodging capture, and trying to stop a conspiracy that threatens the fate of Britain itself. Fast-paced, sharp, and endlessly gripping, The 39 Steps is the original man-on-the-run thriller—a template for everything from Hitchcock to Bond.

After a long stay in South Africa, Richard Hannay arrives back in London just before the outbreak of World War One. There he meets Franklin Scudder, who claims to be investigating the Black Stone - a German spy organization. Hannay gives a shelter to the man but one day he finds him dead. Now the Scotsman fears that he might be the next one on the Black Stone’s list. Hannay decides to go back to his native Scotland with the notebook Scudder gave him before he was murdered.