The Thirty-Nine Steps
by John Buchan (1875–1940)
- Free to read
- 3 hours to read
- 10 chapters
- Reading level: 6th grade
"The Thirty-Nine Steps" by John Buchan is an adventure novel published in 1915. Richard Hannay, a mining engineer from Rhodesia, finds himself caught in a deadly conspiracy when his neighbor is murdered in his London flat. Possessing only a cryptic coded notebook, Hannay flees to Scotland, pursued by both police and German spies seeking to steal Britain's naval secrets. Racing against time before war erupts across Europe, he must decipher the mystery of the thirty-nine steps and stop an international plot that could change history.
- World War, 1914-1918
- Spy stories
- Hannay, Richard (Fictitious character)
- Intelligence service · Great Britain
Read the opening
Chapter I: The Man Who Died
I returned from the City about three o’clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life. I had been three months in the Old Country, and was fed up with it. If anyone had told me a year ago that I would have been feeling like that I should have laughed at him; but there was the fact. The weather made me liverish, the talk of the ordinary Englishman made me sick. I couldn’t get enough exercise, and the amusements of London seemed as flat as soda-water that has been standing in the sun. “Richard Hannay,” I kept telling myself, “you have got into the wrong ditch, my friend, and you had better climb out.”
It made me bite my lips to think of the plans I had been building up those last years in Buluwayo. I had got my pile—not one of the big ones, but good enough for me; and I had figured out all kinds of ways of enjoying myself. My father had brought me out from Scotland at the age of six, and I had never been home since; so England was a sort of Arabian Nights to me, and I counted on stopping there for the rest of my days.
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About this edition
This free edition of The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan comes from Project Gutenberg eBook #558, released 1996-06-01. It is in the public domain in the United States, so you can read it here in full at no cost, on any phone, tablet or computer. Genre: Crime, Thrillers and Mystery, Adventure, Novels, British Literature.
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