"The Three Hostages" by John Buchan

This is the fourth Richard Hannay adventure in the series which started with the much better known The Thirty-Nine Steps. Following becoming a General and a Sir in the Great War, Hannay has retired to the countryside with his wife and young son. But a mysterious criminal gang has kidnapped three people linked to the highest echelons of British society and the baffled authorities appeal to Hannay to find the abductees. All that he has to go on is six lines of poetry which his local doctor can help to interpret. Sure enough, the poetry leads him to where each hostage is hidden and to the master criminal himself who, despite his outward respectability as an MP (how times have changed there!), on first meeting Hannay hypnotises him. But Hannay is able to resist the mesmeric influence and though he continues to act as if he is the puppet and slave of the master, he is slowly able to unravel the crime.

It is well written even though the plot, as outlined above, is a monstrous load of rubbish. It is very much of its time in that it plays to all the prejudices of the Empire-loving Brit: it is racist and anti-Jewish. Working people are good eggs when they are in their place and Hannay's wife is a strong character without whom he could not have freed all the hostages. But the plot, and there is no getting away from the plot in what is, after all, meant to be a thriller, has no tension in it, is almost completely black and white, and revolves around the most audacious set of circumstances.

September 2015; 255 pages

Books by John Buchan reviewed in this blog:

• My very favourite: a historical novel set in Scotland which proved that Buchan really could write: Witch Wood
• Weird plot, terribly un-PC but with some wonderful characters, a laugh aloud speech, and a real feel for the joys of hunting: John Macnab
• Well written but with the most ridiculously bonkers plot and some horrible classism, racism and anti-semitism: The Three Hostages 
• A wonderful description of the Scottish countryside and some fantastic characters and some brilliant counterpointing: Huntingtower
• Greenmantle: another bonkers plot with weak characters set during the First World War