The Wrong Box – R.L. Stevenson & Lloyd Osbourne

Description

A farcical comic caper from the author of Treasure Island!

The Finsbury family has long had a Tontinea 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 BluffThe Wrong Box. A film adaptation, also titled The Wrong Box, was released in 1966, starring Michael Caine and a musical in 2002.