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 BluffI 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