The Wrong Box

A farcical comic caper ... from the author of Treasure Island! The Finsbury family has long had a Tontine-a scheme in which a group puts money into a 'pot' which then is scooped by the last survivor after everyone else dies - a macabre winner takes all scheme. Now there are only two aged uncles between Morris and John Finsbury and their fortune. A railway accident appears to dispose of one, and then the farce begins. The Wrong Box was the first of three novels that Stevenson co-wrote with his stepson Lloyd Osbourne. Osbourne wrote the first draft of the novel late in 1887 (then called The Finsbury Tontine), Stevenson revised it in 1888 (then called A Game of Bluff"I have got R.L. Stevenson's the Wrong Box and laughed over it dementedly when I read it. That man has only one lung but he makes you laugh with all your whole inside" - Rudyard Kipling "...a farce that slips down the throat with the nicety of an oyster," - V.S. Pritchett "...perhaps the most superb extravaganza in the language."- E.F. Benson