In this book, the adventure master Jules Verne shows us his multifaceted talent: He introduces us unexpectedly, but definitively, to a difficult detective problem. The charm of this detective novel lies in the fact that the reader knows the murderers and eagerly awaits when the progressive investigation will lead them to the gallows and the guillotine. However, this only happens at the end and after a random incident - unique in the history of detective novels. Of course, the author does not fail to deal with his well-known weakness: to describe for us the geography and customs of New Zealand and the islands of the South Pacific.