Mr Standfast - John Buchan

Serendipity has led me to another book from the tbr shelves. I follow mystery writer Kerry Greenwood on Facebook & she mentioned that she thought John Buchan was an excellent novelist, much better than his contemporaries, & that Mr Standfast was the best war novel & The Three Hostages the best detective story. I have the Penguin Complete Richard Hannay on the tbr shelves so I immediately started reading Mr Standfast & it was certainly an exhilarating ride.

Richard Hannay - soldier, spy catcher, detective - is John Buchan's most famous character. He first appears in The Thirty-Nine Steps, a book that has been adapted for film & television many times since it was published in 1915. Most of the adaptations depart from the book quite a bit I've never understood why film makers do this. (Don't ever get me started on the latest Miss Marple travesties!) so I'd recommend that you read the book first so that at least you can see what they've changed. I've also read Greenmantle, the next Hannay adventure, & Mr Standfast is the third.

Mr Standfast was published in 1919 & the action takes place during WWI. Hannay has been serving with his regiment on the Western Front when he is suddenly summoned home by the War Office & given an important mission that will take him out of the front line for a while. He's not particularly happy about this & even less happy when he realises that his role will be as an anti-war peace activist. His old Intelligence boss, Bullivant, sends him off to stay at Fosse Manor near Isham to get a lead on a very dangerous man, Moxon Ivery - or at least, that's what he calls himself. Hannay has assumed his old alias, Cornelius Brand, & while at Fosse Manor, he meets Mary Lamington & falls instantly in love. Mary, however, isn't just the token love interest. She's part of Bullivant's intelligence network & is a bright, resourceful young woman who has a crucial part to play in the narrative.

Ivery is posing as one of the anti-war crowd but in reality he's a German spy sending intelligence back to Berlin through an elaborate network of informants & rendezvous in remote locations. I won't even try to describe Hannay's adventures which include dodging the police in the wilds of Scotland after getting himself involved with industrial politics in Glasgow, being trapped in a cage in an impregnable cellar in Switzerland (he shoots his way out of that one in a very surprising way) & trekking over an Alpine pass in the middle of winter in six hours. He even finds himself taking over as director of a war film & using his abilities as a commander of men to foil his pursuers. Every escapade is breathtaking & because the narrative is in the first person, we're right there with Hannay as he makes his discoveries & escapes from his enemies. In between, Hannay returns to his regiment in France & even comes across a lead on Moxon & his cronies at a chateau in Picardy.

Hannay's old friends from previous adventures are much in evidence. Blenkiron, the brash American engineer, is now high up in the Intelligence Service & he's the one who explains the background to Hannay & pulls strings for him. Peter Pienaar has joined the Royal Flying Corps & is having a wonderful time as a crack pilot until he is shot down, badly wounded & taken prisoner. The final confrontation between Hannay & Ivery (who reveals himself as the Graf von Schwabing) is a classic standoff between good & evil, highlighted by the fact that Ivery is also in love with Mary (who had been nursing in France) & planning to kidnap her & take her back to Germany. He hasn't counted on the resourcefulness of either Hannay or Mary & his eventual fate is poetic justice.

The title refers to a character in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress & the book is referred to many times by Hannay, Peter & Mary. Peter in particular becomes absorbed in Bunyan & the Bible during his imprisonment as he comes to terms with his injuries. His badly damaged leg means that he will never fly again. Peter is repatriated to Switzerland & that's where he meets up with Hannay. The scenes between the two old friends are very moving. I have to wonder though whether George Lucas had Peter in mind when he wrote the final scenes of the first Star Wars movie.  I was reminded of those scenes very strongly.  

Mr Standfast is the kind of novel that you race through without getting too bogged down in detail. So much happens so quickly that it's impossible to work it all out anyway. Buchan is always at home in Scotland & these scenes were the most vivid. The Scots characters like Andrew Amos & Geordie Hamilton just leap off the page with their humour & impenetrable dialect. I enjoyed reading Mr Standfast very much & I look forward to reading the last two Hannay novels, The Three Hostages & The Island of Sheep, very soon.

The Numbered Account - Ann Bridge

I've just raced through the third book in the Julia Probyn series. I'm completely addicted to Ann Bridge & I can't thank Bloomsbury Reader enough for bringing her books back into print. I'm even downloading non-Julia Probyn books even when there's no synopsis & I have no idea what they're about. That's the definition of true addiction for me. Bloomsbury have just completed the Julia Probyn series by releasing The Episode at Toledo (the further adventures of Hetta from The Portuguese Escape) & I've also downloaded The Tightening String & Enchanter's Nightshade. If anyone has read these & can tell me what they're about, I'd love to know.

The Numbered Account is set in Switzerland. Julia goes to Switzerland to accompany her great friend Mary Hathaway's maid, Watkins. Mrs Hathaway is ill & staying with a friend. She wants to relieve his household of the burden of her care & Julia agrees to take Watkins, a nervous traveller, out to Switzerland to look after her. When her cousin, Colin Munro, hears about her trip, he asks her to look into a little problem of his own. His fiancée, Aglaia Armitage, has just become a wealthy heiress after the death of her grandfather, Greek tycoon, Orestes Thalassides. His money is safely stowed away in a numbered account in a Swiss bank & can only be accessed by a representative with the appropriate documentation & bona fides. Mr Thalassides' will is a little vague as to his intentions & Aglaia's mother has just sent her on a trip to South America so Julia agrees to visit Aglaia's godfather, a Swiss pastor, get all the necessary passwords & retrieve Aglaia's money.

Of course, it's not that simple. Julia has no trouble with the Swiss pastor but on her way, she discovers that a girl impersonating Aglaia, along with two men calling themselves her godfather & fiancé are also on their way to dupe the bank out of the money. Blueprints for a top secret & very valuable oil transportation system are also at stake & soon British Intelligence are involved as well as the imposters & some very sinister Germans. When the bank hands over the money & the blueprints to the imposters, Julia is soon on the trail, befriending the false Miss Armitage & crossing swords with John Antrobus, British Intelligence's man on the spot.

This is another exciting adventure set in an exotic location & I loved it. Julia visits Aglaia's godfather in his idyllic country parsonage, picks wildflowers on mountainsides with Antrobus, rides a funicular railway to a mountaintop & sweet talks her way in & out of several very tricky situations. In a way, the locations are the real stars of this series. Ann Bridge must have been a great observer on her travels as she makes the countries she writes about come alive. Julia is her usual supremely confident self, although her personal vanity takes a hit when she meets her match in John Antrobus.

As a lover of all things Scottish, I'm especially looking forward to the next Julia Probyn adventure, The Dangerous Islands, set on the west coast & islands of Scotland. My dilemma is, do I just gulp the whole series down by Christmas or should I try to make them last all summer? I do have those unknown Ann Bridge novels to look forward to & there's always the chance that there will be more to come, including, fingers crossed, Illyrian Spring? Decisions, decisions!

There's a copy of The Numbered Account available to buy at Anglophile Books.