The Thirty-Nine Steps

Richard Hannay, back in London from southern Africa and bored to death, comes home one evening to find a frightened neighbour who claims to know of a plot to assassinate a Greek statesman and steal Britain's war plans. A few days later the man lies dead on Hannay's floor, and Hannay, suspected of the murder, flees to Scotland with the dead man's coded notebook, hunted across the moors by the police and by German spies, until he can work out what the thirty-nine steps are.

John Buchan wrote the novel in 1914 while recovering from illness and published it in 1915, early in the First World War; its innocent man on the run became the model for a century of spy thrillers. Adrian Praetzellis reads it alone, in about four hours.