Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson
Stevenson’s Kidnapped? When I could be reading Caroline B. Cooney’s The Face on the Milk Carton or Lois Duncan’s Ransom?
I am considering writing a three-novel series featuring kidnappings. Watching Liam Neeson’s Taken would give me all the tropes and plot points I need to write a kidnap thriller, but Stevenson has great staying power. The musical Jekyll & Hyde is still being performed, and Treasure Island is still read. I wanted to know why.
The book really is an early YA Adventure/Thriller with all the expected tropes in place. The protagonist David Balfour begins the novel with nothing and hopes to gain food, clothing, and shelter by living with his uncle. His offish mean uncle arranges to have David sold off, thereby teaching David about life and men. He learns about the good end of the life spectrum from a powerful charismatic man David’s age named Alan Breck Stewart. There’s the mentor trope and the best friend trope.
The story is rooted in a particular, unusual place, 1700s Scotland. We visit the highlands and lowlands with David, witness a real-life murder of the time being committed, and watch fight scenes on a technological wonder of the time period, a speedy sailing ship called a brig. The highlight of the book, David and Alan attack more than a dozen deadly sailors onboard The Covenant, celebrates bravery and carnage. Quite readable.
The last quarter of the book bogged down under the weight of lawyers–Shakespeare and Stevenson were bedazzled by laws and money–but the short novel ended quickly and well.
Be prepared for Scottish vocabulary of the time. I find it delightful though others will find it daunting. I love that people in Central PA still use the Scottish word “redd” meaning to fix up. The novel’s style is anything but snarky and overwrought. We are privileged to David’s journalistic retelling of events as we see his naivety slowly supplanted by worldly wisdom. My protagonist in the three-book series will be just as naive, only moreso.
Kidnapped tales are still modeled on this book. Mine will be. He paved the way for past adventure novels, for my series, and for spine-tingling tales to come.
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