The Squire of Fosse There is of course a general
improbability about Buchan's admirable stories, as there is about all thrillers; but it is sur- prising how often, and in what unexpected contexts, he slips into either impossibility or implausibility. He allows John Macnab to drag a heavy stag single-handed for a considerable distance. A 1914 aeroplane hunts Hannay over the Galloway hills as unerringly as if it had been an eagle and he an isolated, clueless sheep; and later, I think, in the same book Hannay, at the driving wheel of a car, knocks a policeman off the running- board with a straight left to the jaw. (Try doing this and you will see what I mean; the policeman can be imaginary.) And there are odd little aberrations in Buchan's country .lore. Painting a picture of Sir Richard Hannay's country estate in mid-March, he wrote: " The season was absurdly early. . . , The partridges were paired." But partridges are paired by the end of January, even if the season is not absurdly early. And when, on the following day, Sir Richard says " My keeper was lying in wait for me for instructions about a new batch of pheasants' eggs " I find it—since the keeper must have known, even if his master did not, that pheasants do not begin to lay until well on in April—impossible to imagine what sort of instructions he was hoping to get. But these small lapses only make the stories more enjoyable as far as I am concerned.
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