Wednesday, September 4, 2013

The Abominable Thirty-Nine Steps

You can't read or write thrillers without coming across a book entitled The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan. You probably first encounter it because of the Hitchcock film, or maybe another author or reviewer mentions it. I think I first came across it as an OTR adaptation, and later Buchan's work was mentioned as a precursor to Ian Fleming's novels. The Thirty-Nine Steps is touted as the "original thriller" that sets the table for every thriller that followed. By that, the critics are correct, first is first; however, it's not a good book.

The hero, Richard Hannay, in one of the strangest introductions ever written, is told of a sinister plot. The teller of the tale is murdered, and poor Dick is on the run. He has to stop the dastardly villains before they strike, or all is lost. Instead of taking direct action, Hannay spends 99% of the book running through the Scottish countryside hiding in bushes. He's being hunted by the villains, but not terribly efficiently. Every person he comes across is able to somehow assist him, and the string of coincidences Buchan expects us to swallow along the way are too much. Compared to The Thirty-Nine Steps, the television series 24 is the epitome of logic. In one sequence, for example, Hannay is captured and put in a farm shed. A mining engineer by trade, Hannay quickly deduces that there is material in the shed with which he can make a jolly good bomb! Right-O, let's blast our way out so we can go back to running through the bushes! The book is loaded with such "it just so happened" events that strain your sense of disbelief. It becomes a joke.

At 118 pages (in my Collins Classic edition), the story is thin. It's generic by today's standards, but there's a reason for that. Buchan may have been a pioneer in what we call a thriller today, but, in this book, he did nothing but lay a foundation upon which the rest of us have built the house. Pioneers may set the stage, but it's those who carry on that really take the creation and do something with it. Pick any of the old masters, and their modern counterparts do it better. The Mike Hammer novels may have been huge in their day, but they lack the scope and creativity of the Nate Heller books. Max Allan Collins took what Spillane built and greatly improved the concept. When you read Spillane afterwards, you wonder why he kept repeating the same ideas. Count how many "best buddies" Mike Hammer has to avenge to see what I mean. If you only have Kiss Me, Deadly and One Lonely Night, you have the best examples of Spillane available. Meanwhile, Collins always does something fresh. Not one Heller book is the same as another.

If I may borrow Raymond Chandler's opinion regarding the mystery story, no thriller has yet been written that can be considered so perfect that it cannot be surpassed by another. This is why we continue to assault the citadel. For that, we can thank John Buchan. We like to read thrillers, and a lot of us like to write them. They're fun and exciting. There's nothing better than a good thriller, and nothing worse than a bad one. While I appreciate Buchan's effort, I'm afraid The Thirty-Nine Steps is simply a decent beach book, but hardly a classic.

8 comments:

  1. I'm afraid I disagree. The 39 Steps is flawed by some of your points, however, I've reread it several times and am always enamored by the tale. I've also read my way through the sequel Hannay books, each one building on the one before, and have thoroughly enjoyed the series (Greenmantle is a particular favorite). But for me the blessing of The 39 Steps was it led me directly to John McNab and Prestor John, which I consider to be quintessential Buchan novels.

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  2. One positive thing I will say, and should have already mentioned, is that his writing style, the sense of time and place (the political war-wrangling stuff in the chat with Scudder was terrific) and storytelling skill is good enough that I would like to read his other books to see how they compare. I will put the two you mentioned at the top of the list. And for all of my complaining, I wanted to keep reading "39" to see how it all came out. That's the first time I've finished a book I didn't like, so there *is* something there....

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  3. I appreciate your very flattering comments about my work. I was quite consciously building on Mickey (and Hammett and Chandler) with Nathan Heller, combining the genre they perfected with the historical novel. Since they were contemporary authors, they can't be faulted for not doing more with it (Chandler did in THE LONG GOODBYE). As for Mickey, I think he felt limited by the vengeance/friend-murdered road he was forced down by I, THE JURY's huge success. His initial two follow-ups (the abandoned LADY, GO DIE!, which I finished, and THE TWISTED THING, rejected at the time and not pubbed till twenty years later) were not revenge tales, and indicated a different direction for Hammer. I think the limitations of his success had something to do with the relatively small number of Hammers he published. Interestingly (at least to me) is that some of his most ambitious Hammer novels were ones he did not complete, and I've had the honor of doing so myself. THE GOLIATH BONE, THE BIG BANG, LADY, GO DIE!, COMPLEX 90 and KING OF THE WEEDS are not revenge tales, and KISS HER GOODBYE is only marginally one. Mickey's non-Hammer bigger-landscape novels, THE ERECTION SET and THE LAST COP OUT, indicate where he might have gone had he not been pulled back into the restrictive Jehavoah's Witness church. There remain numerous fragmentary non-Hammer manuscripts in the Spillane files that support this notion.

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  4. Max, If somebody who moved as many units as Mickey was forced down a certain road by his publisher, with others books turned down despite their similar or superior quality (The Twisted Thing is a favorite of mine), could that have been part of his motivation to take a break after Kiss Me, Deadly? The break has always been credited to his religious conversion and how he didn't "need the money", but perhaps he'd had enough of his editor's nonsense too, and he kept his lips zipped on that in because eventually he'd want to write some more?

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  5. No. the rejection of THE TWISTED THING had to do with the poor showing the hardcover of I, THE JURY made. When the paperback of JURY went through the roof, editor Victor Weybright at Signet desperately wanted THE TWISTED THING (originally titled FOR WHOM THE GODS WOULD DESTROY). For whatever reason, Mickey held the book back and did MY GUN IS QUICK (a revenge novel) next. He did not turn in THE TWISTED THING till the '60s when he missed the deadline on THE BIG BANG (which he set aside unfinished...until I finally finished it a while back). Confusing? You bet. The religious conversion definitely was a major part of the multiple reasons he went silent in the novel field (other factors: dissatisfaction with his contract with Dutton/Signet and getting battered so badly by critics and social commentators).

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  6. Well in spite of my above remarks, I'm glad for any Spillane material, any time. I need to catch up with Complex 90 and I'm looking forward to the future efforts.

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  7. Kingsley Amis wrote that historians tend to be either like H G Wells or Edward Gibbon--Onwards and upwards or Decline and Fall. I personally think that our modern thriller are neither better or worse than the classics. They are just different. 39 STEPS is probably not the best introduction to Buchan. He wrote much better stuff, but because of Hitchcock it's the one that immediately springs to mind. MR STANDFAST, which really counts as a direct sequel to it, is a far better written book. It's worth trying out a lot of his non-Hannay stuff like HUNTINGTOWER or THE FREE FISHERS. One of my favourites is JOHN MCNAB, which is a rather light-hearted adventure story. It's not a thriller in the popular sense, but it's a real pleasure to read.

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  8. I will for sure check out Buchan's other work. As I said, 39 Steps is written well, I'm just not a fan of the way the story plays out.

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