The Three Hostages is the fourth of five Richard Hannay novels by Scottish author John Buchan, first published in 1924 by Hodder & Stoughton, London.
Hannay had previously appeared in The Thirty Nine Steps (1915), his most famous adventure in which he battles German spies across England and Scotland, and two books about his activities during the First World War, Greenmantle (1916) and Mr Standfast (1919).
Next day, Julius Victor visits Hannay and tells him his daughter Adela has been kidnapped and held hostage, asking Hannay to help find her. Later that day, MacGillivray visits and tells Hannay of a sinister criminal organisation, controlling the mass of disturbed and disordered minds left over from the Great War, and tracked by the police forces of the world. Faced with capture, the leaders had taken three hostages, Victor's daughter, an aristocratic student and a young boy, sending each of their families a mysterious poem to prove the kidnappings were linked.
He also explains that they have only until June to round up the gang, and that the hostages must be safe by then. Hannay is adamant that he cannot help, but his third visitor that day, Sir Arthur Warcliff, tells him about his missing son, and Hannay is drawn into the chase.
That night, he lies awake pondering the lines of doggerel sent to the families, and connects them to something Greenslade had said recently. Next day he tells Greenslade all, and bids him remember where he drew his phrases, two of which, concerning a blind woman spinning and a barn in Norway, matched verses from the poem, while the third in Greenslade's speech referred to a curiosity shop run by an elderly Jew, which seems to bear no correspondence to the poem's reference to the "Fields of Eden". Greenslade is baffled, but Hannay recalls a hymn mentioning the Fields of Eden, which Greenslade connects with his vague memories.