Here, from the father of spy fiction, is the grand adventure of Richard Hannay, master spy, in a single volume: The 39 Steps, Greenmantle, Mr. Standfast, and The Three Hostages. “John Buchan is the father of the modern spy thriller,” Robin Winks writes in his Introduction, “This is so even though the Hannay books are not, strictly speaking, about spies at all . . . They are about lonely escape and wild journeys, about the thin veneer that stands between civilization and barbarism even in the most elegant drawing-room in London.”
We know the Buchan formula well, although few may remember it was he who set the mold: take an apparently ordinary man, and let him be drawn into a mystery he only vaguely understands; give him a task to perform, and set obstacles in his path; see that he cannot turn to established authority, see that he cannot be certain who he can trust ― and then, set the clock ticking. . .