A century after its publication, I would probably agree with any current-day criticisms of the novel. But it's still a good, fast-paced yarn - and I felt at certain points like a boy again reading an adventure story on a rainy day (I finished it today during a snowfall). I previously read the third book in Buchan's linked trilogy - 'The House of the Four Winds' - and enjoyed this more. At some point I sold my copy of the middle book ('Castle Gay') and will pick up another should I come across one. ( )

This was a bit of a potboiler. I am a great fan of John Buchan's spy adventure novels, but both the plot and the development of the characters in Huntingtower seemed to be second-rate.

Huntingtower is the first of a series of three novels centered around the character Dickson McCunn. The novels in the series were written alongside other novels by Buchan I appreciate much more. The fast development of the plot is characteristic, as are serendipity and exaggerated elements of a strong story. The solidarity of Scottish (or British) folk against a sinister foreign power, and corruption of some countrymen are also a fixed element. Another thing is the obvious love of the Scottish countryside, and beautiful descriptions of the landscape, nature, villages and castles.

Still, particularly in this first volume, the character of Dickson McCunn, as well as Heritage are cardboard characters. Their unexpected ally consists in a troupe of street urchins, the Gorbal Die-Hards and their leader Dougal, sketched by the same pasteboard characterization. There is some humor in the way they are juxtaposed against the aristocratic Sir Archibald. The Gorbal Die-Hards add a fairy-tale element to the novel.

Huntingtower was written shortly after the Russian Revolution and published in 1922. The novel contains several story elements that would later feature in Cold War era pulp fiction, such as Russian spies, the ruthlessness of Bolshevik spies, the power of a united people to withstand an invader, and the importance of the middle class and its natural loyalty to the upper classes. ( )

A grand tale of derring-do, though I kept expecting some massive twist where all the good guys were the bad guys and so forth. This meant I didn't really follow all the complicated battle and adventure scenes since I was looking for the secret clues that weren't actually there.

The Old Scots dialect nearly did me in but I managed to get through it all. A fun listen from LibriVox with a very good reader.

Huntingtower is the tale of a holiday gone wondrously, fantastically wrong. All Dickson McCann expected was to take a nice ramble in the Scottish countryside, while his wife was away at the spa. Instead he found himself saving a princess with only a cynical poet and some underfed schoolboys as allies. In the process, his tired life finds a second wind.

A fun, period adventure. ( )

A classic slice of traditional adventure fiction by one of the great masters of the genre. The hero of this novel (set in the early 1920s) and its two successors is retired grocer Dickson McCunn who decides to mark his retirement from the respectable world of grocery by going for a walking holiday in Southwest Scotland, in the hope of encountering some scent of romantic ideal. As luck would have it he becomes embroiled in a Bolshevik plot to exploit a former Russian princess and divest her of her family jewels.
In his travails McCunn is helped by long-time Buchan regular, Sir Archibald Roylance (though in this particular novel he is more heavily clothed in obtuseness than usual), a would-be free-verse poet John Heritage and the hardy Gorbals Die-Hards, a street gang from the poorer reaches of Glasgow who have been given an opportunity to escape the roughness of the backstreets of Glasgow to commune with nature.
Beautifully written and exquisitely plotted, this is Buchan near his best. ( )