The Great Dinosaur Robbery

The Great Dinosaur Robbery is a now out-of-print book released in 1970 and written by David Eliades and Robert Forrest Webb under the pseudonym of David Forrest. The book was later the basis for the 1975 film One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing.

Plot

The book is set in New York City in the 1970s, and follows attempts by a group of British nannies who discover that a microdot containing Chinese military secrets that they believe to be vital to the survival of the British Empire has been hidden in a skeleton in the American Museum of Natural History. They cannot find the message, so contrive to steal the entire skeleton and mail it to the Queen. The Chinese agents who hope to retrieve the message, and the Americans searching for the missing dinosaur, play important roles.

Film

The film differed greatly from the book in the sense that it was aimed at children rather than adults, with the violence toned down considerably. The setting was also changed from New York City to England, principally London, and the time period changed to the 1920s. In the book, the villains were agents of communist China, but the film featured agents from post-World War I China, with the Cold War undertones practically non-existent.