By now Hannay is a brigadier yet Sir Walter thinks he can still go undercover as a pacifist. He winds up on the run in Scotland again, although this isn’t as fun as The 39 Steps. This is the book where confirmed bachelor Hannay falls in love, with a sensible, spirited girl who is young enough to be his daughter.
The choppy structure (i.e. on the mission, then back to the front, then back to the mission again) is less noticeable as a book than it was as radio adaptation but it’s still a stop-start tale. There are some additions to the Hannay gang – the chipper idiot Archie Roylance, love interest Mary (who is OK, pretty and overly sensible – I kept imagining Pat Roc or Phyllis Calvert). We lose Pieter Pienaar, and gain then lose one of Buchan’s most interesting characters, a brave conscientious objector Wake. There’s a fun scene where Hannay interrupts the action of a war movie, which Hitchcock would have loved.
As long as this moves fast it’s alright but when it stops and bogs down it becomes dreary – lots of characters crapping about Americans, and pacifists, and women. Dull opinions expressed in uninteresting fashion, and Dick Hannay becomes increasingly irritating. (A thought – is the reason they send him on this mission even though he’s a general because he’s a crappy general and they want to get him off the front).
But just when I was about to fling the book across the room the last section of it picks up. It’s a weird mash of Buchan thriller, and more outlandish melodrama (super villain falls in love with heroine, chains up hero in dungeon and tells him of plans for world domination) and descriptions of battles – this book is four genres in one (the fourth is the crappy-Buchan-take-on-life genre). But at least it’s lively.
No comments:
Post a Comment