My wife and I have been taking long driving trips lately, mostly to New York, Ohio, and Indiana, and rather than listening to music or "books on tape," we've developed the habit of reading aloud. And when I say "we," I mean her since I normally do most of the driving. For past three months our driving book has been a collection of John Buchan, the Four Adventures of Richard Hannay.

Now I had read about Buchan before, and made mental note that during a free week or two, I'd try and track down his books and give them a good read. When shopping for a birthday gift for my wife this past March, I stumbled upon a Buchan collection and bought it. What a find. We now have read Thirty-Nine Steps (and watched the 1935 Hitchcock movie of the same, but the movie takes serious liberties), about Hannay's inadvertant stumbling upon a career in military intelligence and his futile attempts to stop the beginning of World War One. And then Greenmantle, about an attempt by Imperial Germany to stir up a jihad via its Ottoman Turk allies in 1915, and Hannay's thwarting of the same with a reliable cast of friends (the mysterious Orientalist Sandy, the American businessman Blenkiron, the crusty useful Boer Peter). Followed by Mr. Standfast, Hannay's pursuit of the diabolical man of mystery Ivery and his network of spies. Finally, we are now completing the Three Hostages, Hannay's 1920s battle with the hypnotic villain (quite literally) Medina.

These books are not only entertaining, they are finely written (if occasionally melodramtic -- Buchan's attempt at giving Hannay a romantic life reads like a soap opera) and richly descriptive, especially in relating details of geography. Few writers can paint a mental picture of Scotland, Turkey, or Norway like Buchan. And lately much attention has been given to his line about Islam at the beginning of Greenmantle: There is a dry wind blowing through the East, and the parched grasses wait the spark ... Islam is a fighting creed, and the mullah still stands in the pulpit with the Koran in one hand and a drawn sword in the other.

In addition, Buchan puts rather insightful remarks into the mouths of his characters. This came home to me while reading (or listening to, actually) a remark by a character in Mr. Standfast, the contrite ex-pacifist Lancelot Wake. Speaking with Hannay at a French cafe, Wake remarks: I hate more than I love. All we humanitarians and pacificists have hatred as our mainspring. Odd isn't it, for people who preach brotherly love? But it's the truth. We're full of hate towards everything that doesn't square in with our ideas. everything that jars on our ladylike nerves. Fellows like you are so in love with their cause that they've no time or inclination to detest what thwarts them. We've no cause -- only negatives, and that means hatred, and self-torture, and a beastly jaundice of soul. What a rich, concise description of ideology and dangers inherent in sentimental progressivism.

Put Buchan on your summer reading list, and check out the John Buchan Society. I'd say it is required reading for any aspiring Young Fogey.