The Three Hostages

The Three Hostages is the fourth of five Richard Hannay novels by the Scottish author John Buchan, first published in 1924 by Hodder & Stoughton, London.

Hannay had previously appeared in The Thirty Nine Steps (1915), his most famous adventure, in which he battles German spies across the United Kingdom, and in two books about his activities during the First World War, Greenmantle (1916) and Mr Standfast (1919).

Some years after his 39 Steps mission, Richard Hannay encounters a global criminal gang. Battling international kidnappers, agent Richard Hannay takes on a sinister adversary.

Wonderful escapist entertainment.

Buchan's #4 featuring Richard Hannay - now Sir Richard, and retired from the army to live in the Cotswolds with his wife Mary and young son Peter John. But the idyllic lifestyle is interrupted when he is asked to assist with the rescue of three hostages by a group of men plotting a political and financial upheaval that would rock the world. But who is the ringleader, and what has it to do with a strange little poem given as a clue?

Set mostly in London with a short sojourn to Norway, it is perhaps the darkest of the Hannay stories so far and certainly more complex in structure and reasoning than the earlier novels. As usual with this series, the book was completely contemporary at the time published (1924). The protagonist blends Eastern mysticism and hypnotism with the more straightforward kidnapping, blackmail and profiteering and, as we come to expect with Richard Hannay some frantic chasing as the deadline approaches.

Notwithstanding the frantic section towards the end, there is more sedate chapter than the reader would have found in books 1-3, including several at the start where Hannay is resistant to being drawn into the rescue, and several more when he is at a bit of a standstill on solving the problem and goes through a period of just really treading water waiting for something to happen. However this variable pace was more a pro than a con, as variation in pacing allows the story to build to its climax.

There are some old friends to help him along the way -Sandy Arbuthnot and Archie Roylance feature heavily, and of course Hannay's wife Mary who plays a very involved part of resolving the story

Perhaps the most amusing part was when Buchan, though the Dr Greenslade character sums up the writing of an adventure story - self mocking at its finest:

I want to write a shocker, so I begin by fixing on one or two facts which have no sort of connection… You invent a connection – simple enough if you have any imagination – and you weave all three into a yarn. The reader, who knows nothing about the three at the start, is puzzled and intrigued and, if the story is well arranged, finally satisfied. He is pleased with the ingenuity of the solution, for he doesn’t realise that the author fixed upon the solution first, and then invented a problem to suit it.

I found it as readable and enjoyable as the earlier books.

4 stars.