The Wrecker

Mineola, NY, U.S.A.: Dover Publications, Incorporated, 1982. Trade Paperback. Very Good. 5 1/2" x 8 1/2. Hole, William (illustrator); Metcalf, W. L. (illustrator). 427 Pages. Unabridged edition of original publication by Cassell in London in 1892. In 1889 Stevenson wrote to his editior The story is founded on fact, the mystery I really believe to be insoluble; the purchase of a wreckk has never been handled before, no more has San Francisco. These seem all elements of success. Stevenson had long been attracted to the police novel or mystery story and although this was a collaboration with his stepson Lloyd Osbourne, the novel is the style of Stevenson. Written in 1892 while Stevenson was resting from tuberculosis and where he presided as island patriarch. There is the strange, authentic tang of Polynesia, the ports, reefs, islanders and terrifyingly wide oceans pervading and coloring this story. The wreck in question foundered on the uninhabited isle of Midway, and before the story is through and the truth revealed, the artis-turned-smuggler Dodd has piratical adventures in pre-earthquake San Francisco, and over the world in Edinburgh, Paris, Sydney, Tahiti, Tehran and Constantinople. Dodd is the detective, obsessed with the secret of the Flying Scud and its ghostly crew. This later novel, coming after The Master of Ballantrae is a Stevenosn rarity.