John Macnab

John Buchan June, my personal project to read and write about as many of the great author’s classic adventure novels as I can, continues with a novel I hadn’t heard of until fairly recently, but that many Buchan fans regard as one of his absolute best: John Macnab.

It is striking, reading this many of Buchan’s books in such close succession, to note how many of his heroes are smart, capable, energetic men who suffer intolerably when they have nothing meaningful to do. They begin the book bored—utterly, irremediably bored. Thus Richard Hannay begins The Thirty-Nine Steps, which I wrote about last time, “pretty well disgusted with life,” so disgusted he tempts fate by challenging placid, affluent London to give him something interesting to do within twenty-four hours.

But imagine three such men—all smart, all capable, all energetic, none with any kind of meaningful work to do. Imagine that they learn of each others’ horrible ennui. Imagine that, unlike Hannay, nothing stimulating presents itself. Imagine, then, that they take curing their boredom into their own hands.

John Macnab begins with lawyer and politician Sir Edward Leithen receiving bad news from his doctor: nothing is wrong with him. Not physically. Leithen ennui is a symptom of peacetime (this novel was written and takes place in the early 1920s) and, moreover, success. Britain won the war, Leithen is good at his job, everything is right with the world—and it is completely enervating. The doctor’s prescription for Leithen: steal a horse. Leithen needs to challenge himself, to do something dangerous, something he might fail at, something that is mildly illegal. That, the doctor suggests half-ironically, will get the blood pumping.

Leithen scoffs, but the advice sticks with him. That evening, still listless but now frustrated as well, he cancels his dinner plans and goes to his club to eat alone. There he runs into two friends: John Palliser-Yeates, a banker, and Charles Lamancha, a nobleman and politician. Leithen tells them about his boredom and his doctor’s unhelpful prescription, and Palliser-Yeates and Lamancha reveal that they, too, feel the same affliction. At this point a fourth friend, the young war veteran and aspiring politician Sir Archie Roylance, who owns an estate in the Scottish highlands, tells them a story: a man called Jim Tarras, similarly struck low with boredom before the war, “invented a new kind of sport.” Tarras, Roylance says, would send anonymous notes to the owners of large highland estates announcing his intention to poach one of their deer, and the excitement of both stalking game and evading the landowners’ gamekeepers proved exhilarating.

Archie, who is young and brave (he limps painfully from a wound gotten in the war) but a bit oblivious, thinks that this story will amuse his friends. It does not have the intended effect.

Leithen, Palliser-Yeates, and Lamancha make a pact on the spot—they will undertake the same “new kind of sport,” as Tarras, sending notes to three highland estates near Archie’s announcing their intention to poach two deer and a salmon and challenging them, defying them, to stop it. If the three friends succeed, they will present their game to the landowners with £50. If caught, they will forfeit £100. They draft the letters and adopt a collective pseudonym: John Macnab.

Archie is chagrined by all this but, having given his friends the idea, agrees to host them at Crask, his somewhat shabby home near the three great estates they have chosen as targets—Glenraden, a well-forested tract which has been in the Raden family for nearly a thousand years and has a barrow reputed to be the tomb of a Viking warlord; Strathlarrig, where an American amateur archaeologist is staying while he excavates the barrow at Glenraden; and Haripol, the new faux-Tudor manor home built on staggeringly rugged land by the vulgar nouveau riche Lord Claybody.

The three men known as John Macnab reconnoiter from Crask and gain intelligence not only on the lay of the land and the obstacles they will face on the hunt but, perhaps more importantly, the character of the opponents. Colonel Alistair Raden is a tough old Scot who views himself as the steward of his land and responded to John Macnab’s letter with brusque defiance. Acheson Bandicott, the American, is too busy with his digging and cataloging to worry much about poaching, but his smooth young son seems a bit too cheerfully keen to stop John Macnab. And the Claybodys, upon receiving their note from John Macnab, contacted their lawyers.

And so Leithen, Palliser-Yeates, and Lamancha lay their plans, ready their guns, practice their casting and fly-tying, and keep a weather eye on local events. And Archie, having met Janet Raden, one of the Colonel’s daughters, finds himself falling for her—and wondering what to do about John Macnab now.

This is a lot of setup. It is a testament to Buchan’s grace and skill as a writer that only in trying to explain the story have I realized how complex the novel is. All of this occurs before John Macnab’s hunt begins, and all of it is handled with artful characterization and brisk pacing. The introduction of Janet to the plot is only the first of several wonderful complications; eventually Bandicott’s excavations, local politics involving Archie and Lamancha, and a legion of reporters impinge on John Macnab and his sport. What begins as a more genteel and sporting version of “The Most Dangerous Game” builds in intensity and complexity as it goes, both the hunters and those trying to stop them improvise and change course as the situation changes, and nothing turns out as you might expect. It is a wonderfully written and surprising novel.

The two great strengths of John Macnab—beyond the expert pacing—are the characters and the scenery. When I posted on Prester John I noted Buchan’s extraordinary capacity for seeing things from others’ perspectives; that trait is clearly on display in John Macnab, as he renders every character distinct, well-rounded, and understandable. They are also fun, the whole lot of them. Particular favorites of mine were Sir Edward Leithen, who gets the plot rolling and gamely essays every impossible new task that comes John Macnab’s way, the put-upon but well-meaning Sir Archie, and Janet Raden, one of the most arresting and attractive female characters I’ve encountered outside Jane Austen. Archie’s infatuation with Janet begins as comedy but ends with a genuinely sweet, fun, and surprising romance—as well as delicious plot complications.

But Buchan’s ability with character is not limited to giving his characters charming personalities or quirky character traits, and his evenhanded attention to each character’s opinions, priorities, and beliefs proves a key part of the story. Even the comic characters, like the coarse and litigious Claybodys, are treated fairly, and the way their personalities inform their choices makes a difference to the story. These characters feel like real people. Indeed, character—as in ethos, as in personality, virtues, and vices—matters as much to the plot as any event or deed. I’ve seldom seen it done so well.

The characters also deepen the plot, adding meaning, thematic resonance, and pathos in unexpected places, as when Janet tells Archie that Colonel Raden will be the last of the Radens, that Glenraden, the land he loves so much, must inevitably pass out of his family since he has only two daughters. Archie (and the reader) knows these things intellectually, but Janet gives them meaning. While the two look for John Macnab, they reflect on the way civilization kills the people that build it, softening them, robbing them of fighting spirit, turning them into vegetables that merely exist and consume. The old must make way for the new, unless the old shows it still has the strength to fight. It’s a delightfully multi-layered passage, the thematic key to the whole book, but it is made fun and memorable by arising from two good characters.

Second, when I write that scenery is a great strength of John Macnab, I really mean scenery. Buchan describes not only the geography of the plot’s action but the visual splendor of Scotland beautifully. Buchan was no mean outdoorsman and loved to tramp through the hills and wilderness, and his keen observation and firsthand knowledge of this kind of environment give the hunting and fishing scenes—or even a simple scene of a young man and woman walking through the countryside and talking—a vividness and immediacy often missing in more recent fiction. Each time I set John Macnab down, I really felt as if I were returning from somewhere else. This fictional region of Scotland is engaging while you read it. By the end you’ll have come, like the Radens, like Archie, and, in his own way, like John Macnab, to love it. When you finish, you’ll miss it.

With an intriguing premise, lively and surprising characters, an expert mixture of humor, action, and suspense, and just the right touch of thought, John Macnab is a richly imagined and beautifully written story and a joy to read. It may not be the most famous of Buchan’s novels—again, that’d be The Thirty-Nine Steps—but it may well be his best.