The Devil’s Throat: Or, Robert Louis Stevenson, Detective

Theroux (Black Coconuts, Black Magic) couples a plausible fictional depiction of Robert Louis Stevenson with an intriguing whodunit plot based on a real-life unsolved mystery. In 1889, while Stevenson is living in Hawaii, the corpse of Jules Tavernier, a “celebrated painter of Plains Indians and Hawaiian volcanoes,” is found in his Honolulu studio. Since the doctor who examines the body attributes his death to “excessive use of alcoholic drinks,” there’s no inquest. In Theroux’s telling, which is based on a claim that Stevenson’s stepdaughter would later make in her memoir, Tavernier was shot through the heart, and someone is covering up the truth. Aided by his stepson, Samuel Lloyd Osbourne, Stevenson searches for clues and motives, as well as links between the painter’s death and other murders. In Theroux’s hands, Stevenson is an effective sleuth, and Sherlockians will be amused at his echoing Holmes’s cynical view of doctors (“When a medical man turns to crime, he is the worst of offenders”). Readers will hope to see more of the famous author as detective. (BookLife)