...Our hero is dispatched to Paris in 1940 on the brink of the city’s fall to Germany. His mission is to find an individual code-named Roland, who may have been captured by the Nazis. Hannay must track Roland down and spirit him back to London, along with certain information he possesses, upon which 'the whole future of the war could hang.' ... The can-do spirit of Mr. Harris’s book evokes a time when it seemed the fate of the world might hinge on the acts of a handful of brave souls. The Thirty-One Kings is old-fashioned in many ways—which is what makes it such a reassuring pleasure to read.
Richard Hannay returns to action in The Thirty-One Kings by Robert J. Harris, a new spy thriller set in wartime Paris, where John Buchan’s famed hero races to track down a mysterious figure holding vital war secrets before the Nazis beat him to it ... readers will flock to tales of derring-do, underlaid with patriotic courage and characteristically British stiff-upper-lip.
...While on a walking tour of Scotland, Hannay and his wife, Mary, try to aid a pilot whose biplane crashes near them. The pilot recognizes Hannay and imparts a cryptic message...With his dying breath, he implores Hannay to find 'the thirty-one kings.' Hannay follows the clues to a London bookstore, Traill’s, where an old American friend, John Blenkiron, reveals that some men are conspiring to topple Churchill so as to facilitate reaching an accommodation with Hitler ... Those unfamiliar with Buchan’s originals won’t be inspired to seek them out.
