Greenmantle 2
First World War Fiction
Greenmantle is a tale of intrigue and adventure set during the First World War. It features Richard Hannay, hero of the author’s earlier novel The Thirty-Nine Steps. As he travels through Europe to foil a German plot and find an Islamic Messiah, he is joined by three more of Buchan’s heroes: Peter Pienaar, a Boer scout; John Blenkiron, an American determined to fight the Kaiser; and Sandy Arbuthnot (Greenmantle), modeled on Lawrence of Arabia. The intrepid friends move in disguise through Germany to Constantinople to the Russian border to confront their enemies—the grotesque Stumm and the evil beauty Hilda von Einem. [Major Hannay’s narrative of this affair has been published under the title of The Thirty–nine Steps.]