George Sampson, who introduced this undated edition of Stevenson's stories, was careful to draw attention to what he saw as their faults of construction; but for all that, they are attractive and interesting to read more than a century after they were written. Conan Doyle and Chesterton may well have learned from Stevenson's storytelling technique - the master criminal and his opponent still have the power to draw us into the fast-moving events. Of the other stories, "The Sieur de Maletroit's Door" with its vivid evocation of a medieval past in which well-born women were, in theory at least, completely at the disposal of their male guardians, retains its power to involve the reader. ( )

A collection of short stories written by Stevenson before he became famous, published in various magazines in the late 1870s, includes his first published fiction. Composed of two "books", the first book is a series of nested inter-related stories of diverse topics - thus the allusion to the "Arabian Knights" whose stories were also nested (other than that no connection). These stories are sometimes called the first modern English short stories, and the "nesting" technique was very cutting edge. The Suicide Club was made into a movie called "The Game of Death". ( )