The Thirty-nine Steps

Author(s): John Buchan

Genre(s): Action & Adventure Fiction, Detective Fiction, Suspense, Espionage, Political & Thrillers

Narrators: Adrian Praetzellis

Number of Chapters: 10

Length: 4 hours and 20 minutes

Language: English

Richard Hannay’s boredom is soon relieved when the resourceful engineer is caught up in a web of secret codes, spies, and murder on the eve of WWI. This exciting action-adventure story was the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1939 classic film of the same name. John Buchan (1875-1940) was Governor General of Canada and a popular novelist. Although condemned by some for anti-Semitic dialog in The Thirty-Nine Steps, his character’s sentiments do not represent the view of the author who was identified in Hitler’s Sonderfahndungsliste (special search list) as a "Jewish sympathiser." (Summary by Adrian Praetzellis)