Thriller by R.L.S.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 758, 29 January 1954, Page 15

Thriller by R.L.S.

OBERT LOUIS STEVENSON’S famous sea mystery The Wrecker, which he wrote in collaboration with his step-son, Lloyd Osbourne, has been adapted by the BBC as a three-part radio drama under the title of The Mystery of the Empty Ship. A transcription of the serial, each part of which is an hour long, begins from 3YC at 8.0 p.m. on Monday, February 1. The plot concerns two young Americans, Loudon Dodd and James Pinkerton, partners in various specylative enterprises in San Francisco, who bid at auction for the ‘ wreck of the brig Flying Scud lying on Midway Island.

The "wreckers," | as they are called, are wreck-buyers, not criminals who lure ships to their destruction in the old English sense of the word, and they expect to get this particular wreck cheaply enough. However, a_ half-

caste lawyer, acting on behalf of a mysterious Englishman, bids against them, forcing up the price to a figure that makes them suspect there is a valuable cargo on board-possibly opium. They outbid the half-caste and Dodd goes off to Midway, only to discover that the Flying Scud contains little of value. But he does find a photograph which shows that the supposed survivors who were landed at San Francisco were impostors, and from then on he determines not to rest until he has discovered why someone was so anxious to secure a comparatively worthless wreck. The hunt for the

truth is full of suspense and incident, and the solution is unexpected. The parts of Dodd and Pinkerton are played. by Guy Kingsley _ Poynter and John Glenn. Lance Sieveking, who adapted The Wrecker for the BBC, described it

in the Radio Times as "one of the finest full-sized mystery stories ever written, by Stevenson or anyone else. The interest and development never flag; and the way in which clues and incidents tie up with each other across hundreds of pages is an astonishing feat of construction." Lloyd Osbourne has described how he collaborated with Stevenson on the book. Sitting under a huge mosquito net, first on the island of Tembinoka and then at Samoa, Osbourne would draft out a chapter while Stevénson rewrote what Osbourne had written the previous day. "It was conceived in such high spirits and with so much laughter and entertainment," Osbourne said, "that the zest of its authors is surely to be found in the story."