Publisher's Synopsis
Adventures of a Corpse is an action novel in which Stevenson uses his great talents as an adventure storyteller in a detective theme that he handles with the usual effects of clarity and suspense. We are talking about detective theme because it does not become a detective novel, since it lacks such basic elements as a crime and a detective, but it does not stop having a corpse going from one place to another and a decisive economic motive connected with death that forms the basis of the work. The constant ironic allusions to police methods, to famous policemen, to imaginary detectives like Robert Skill, would make us think of a satire of this genre of novel, but it turns out that the author deals with the other economic, social and political aspects with the same sarcasm, including Gladstone himself, who, by the way, was not a politician of his devotion, but they say he stayed up one night to finish reading Treasure Island. This general, slight and inconsequential sneer turns the novel into an amusing farce. In fact, that must have been Stevenson's intention, to write an entertaining short story to introduce his stepson Lloyd Osbourne to the art of storytelling.
