Torchlight - Hardcover

With a double dose of literary heritage--he claims both the author of Treasure Island and poet Hart Crane as ancestors--Robert Louis Stevenson III would seem to have been born to be a writer. But this particular Stevenson first found fame as a scuba diver specializing in exploring sunken wrecks such as the Andrea Doria, and it's this side of his brain that makes Torchlight so fascinating. Every technical detail of his story about two former Navy SEAL divers who get involved in a scheme to loot a billion dollars in gold from a sunken World War I warship rings true, and Stevenson has inherited enough writing skill to make his characters come alive.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was born in Edinburgh. In the brief span of forty-four years, dogged by poor health, he made an enormous contribution to English literature with his novels, poetry, and essays. The son of upper-middle-class parents, he was the victim of lung trouble from birth, and spent a sheltered childhood surrounded by constant care. The balance of his life was taken up with his unremitting devotion to work, and a search for a cure to his illness that took him all over the world. His travel essays were publihsed widely, and his short fiction was gathered in many volumes. His first full-length work of fiction, Treasure Island, was published in 1883 and brought him great fame, which only increased with the publication of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). He followed with the Scottish romances Kidnapped (1886) and The Master of Ballantrae (1889). In 1888 he set out with his family for the South Seas, traveling to the leper colony at Molokai, and finally settling in Samoa, where he died.