John Buchan · 1915 · thriller

John Buchan's 1915 novel, written in a nursing home and inventing the chase thriller as it went. A bored colonial takes in a stranger who says a European war is being engineered, finds him knifed to death in his flat, and runs for Scotland with both the police and the conspirators behind him - and three weeks to stop the plan.

1. 1
   London

   Richard Hannay, back from Rhodesia and bored to death with London, lets a frightened American into his flat to hear a story about a plot to set Europe alight - and finds him a few days later pinned to the floor with a knife.

2. 2
   Galloway

   He takes the night train to Scotland and goes to ground in the Galloway moors, moving from farm to farm and identity to identity - milkman, roadman, political candidate - with an aeroplane quartering the hills above him.

3. 3
   London

   Back in London with the notebook decoded, he convinces the men who matter that the plot is real - and that the country's naval dispositions are about to walk out of a room in Whitehall in somebody's memory.

4. 4
   The Kent coast

   The clue is a flight of steps down to the sea and a tide at a particular hour, and the hunt ends at a villa on the Kent cliffs where three entirely ordinary Englishmen are playing bridge - and one of them is not English at all.