Free to read
The Thirty-Nine Steps
John Buchan
Richard Hannay wanted an escape from boredom. A murder in his flat gives him one: now he is on the run across Scotland, carrying a secret that could put a country in danger.
- Language
- English
- Genre
- Thriller / Mystery
- Length
- 10 chapters · About 3 hours
- First published
- 1915
- Availability
- Free
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Is this book for you?
A fast chase for readers who enjoy disguises, close calls and conspiracies. Short chapters keep the pace moving; some prejudices reflect its wartime setting.
Read it in English. This edition is free to add to your library.
Text source: Project Gutenberg. Source license and territorial terms.
THE OPENING PAGES
Try the first few lines.
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.
But from the first I was disappointed with it. In about a week I was tired of seeing sights, and in less than a month I had had enough of restaurants…Start reading this book ↗