Undisputed Classic 2

Wild Card Classic. The reader has to make allowances when they read thrillers of bygone days.

Mr Standfast - John Buchan

This is the third novel starring series hero Richard Hannay, an English brigadier general who reluctantly accepts an espionage assignment during the First World War. The prequels were the famous The Thirty-Nine Steps (made into a movie) and the lesser known but great fun Greenmantle.

Hannay is ordered by the War Office to get in good with British anti-war groups because the office fears pacifist and avant-garde organizations may be used as fronts for German spy activity. Hannay’s alias is Cornelius Brand. His cover story is that he’s a mining engineer from South Africa who wants to visit his ancestral land for the first time and get to know its places, people and political climate. Playing the colonial as useful idiot, he infiltrates a manor house in a quiet Cotswold village. He meets eccentrics and cranks into beastly things like the arts, one of whom writes novels about “life” and “truth” and “reality”… hmm, whose son or lover might this be?

The creature was tuberculous in mind and body, and the only novel of his I read, pretty well turned my stomach. Mr Aronson’s strong point was jokes about the war. If he heard of any acquaintance who had joined up or was even doing war work his merriment knew no bounds. My fingers used to itch to box the little wretch’s ears.

Hannay looks for a spy’s “post office” in the Scottish Highlands. Under cover and arousing suspicion, Hannay is pursued by military police, Scottish constables, and those relentless amateur detectives, boy scouts. To escape from the unwitting ones who will blow his cover, Hannay fleeing on foot comes across the shooting of a battle scene for a war movie so he covers his escape by using his command voice to cause confusion in the ranks of the veteran troops seconded as extras. It’s a hoot.

The novel moves steadily, delivering lots of excitement as he chases down “the most dangerous man in the world” in London, to no avail though.  Hannay fights at the front in France for a time and then travels undercover to Switzerland in efforts to roll up the spy ring. The climax of the confrontation between Hannay and The Bad Guy really rocks.

Buchan can be considered a founding father of the spy thriller that Eric Ambler and Geoffrey Household made so popular in the 1930s. Buchan used that relatable theme of the decent person caught up in international intrigue, way out of their depth but becoming the victorious hero in the end. His respect for those who gave so much to their country is moving:

The boy looked at me pleasantly. ‘I’m very glad to meet you, sir. You’ll excuse me not getting up, but I’ve got a game leg.’ He was the copy of his father in features, but dark and sallow where the other was blond. He had just the same narrow head, and stubborn mouth, and honest, quick-tempered eyes. It is the type that makes dashing regimental officers, and earns V.C.s, and gets done in wholesale. I was never that kind. I belonged to the school of the cunning cowards.

Sure, the romance scenes are cornball, the racism casual, the imperialism dated. But readers looking for an old-time thriller won’t go wrong this one.