Edward Leithen is the closest of Buchan's protagonists to the
author's own experience and imagination. A prosperous Scots lawyer and
MP in London, Leithen seeks adventure to relieve the tedium of
respectability.
In The Power House he is forced by event and accident to see civilisation as a thin veneer over the human jungle; in John Macnab he makes his own adventure by playing the poacher; in Sick Heart River, seeking a lost friend he meets death and redemption in the wastes of Canada.
Each book contrasts with the others; each pulls us into Buchan's world and holds us there.
"
Buchan knew that you can't buck the consequences of your actions, and
that your life is what you make of it. Perhaps his peculiarly Scottish
combination of Romanticism and Calvinism - daring living and high
thinking - is due to return to fashion.
" - * The Independent Magazine *
"
He explores different themes ... He expounds theories through a wide
variety of subjects but all the while there is the basic ingredient of
telling a good story so the reader can enjoy their sheer entertainment
value.
" - * Yorkshire Gazette and Herald *
"
John Buchan was the first to realise the enormous dramatic value of
adventure in familiar suroundings happening to unadventurous men.
" - * Graham Greene *
