books:

	Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman (Penguin Classics) E. W. Hornung Penguin Classics, 2003 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 5 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

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Horung's Raffles is a sort of counter to Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, using his intellect for theft rather than for detection. With his sidekick and chronicler Bunny, Raffles has a series of adventures where pulling of the crime is the key, not catching the criminal. Oddly, Raffles, though a scamp, isn't a monster. He's not a killer, although he contemplates it in the story "Wilful Murder". Also, he's not always sucessful, as in the story "Costume Piece", where Raffles and Bunny escape by the skin of their teeth, empty-handed.

This book is good fun all around. The Penguin edition adds to the fun by extensively annotating the text, giving insight into Horung's sources and motivations. Definitely recommended for people who like Victorian stories, drawing rooms mysteries, crime novels, and mild satires of conventions.

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Wonderfully entertaining

When Bunny (a public-school nickname) finds himself hopelessly in debt, and on the verge of ruination, he turns to an old school chum of his, A.J. Raffles. It turns out that Raffles can help him, but not in the manner he had imagined. Having found himself in a similar predicament years ago, Raffles took a novel solution, he became an amateur cracksman, that is, a cat-burglar. Remarkably free from any sort of moral qualms, Raffles takes Bunny on as his assistant, and together they lead a life of gentleman criminals. Sometimes they score stunning coups, and sometimes they suffer humiliating defeats; this is the life of Raffles and Bunny.

A man who was Arthur Conan Doyle's brother-in-law and friend wrote this story in 1899. This book reflects the more gentle style of Victorian literature (as also seen in the Sherlock Holmes stories), where the emphasis is placed on dialogue and suspense, rather than gunplay and action. Raffles is a gentleman, one without a moral compass, but one does know that there has to be a comeuppance somewhere, right? This is a wonderfully entertaining book, one that I recommend to you.

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Evil thieving Sherlock Holmes

Yep this book pretty much gives you a take on what would happen if genius detective Sherlock Holmes were instead genius cat burglar Justice Raffles. Raffles commits high collar petty theft for fun and profit. He steals jewelry etc and uses his connections as a gentleman to sniff out new opportunities. At one point as he describes the many middle men involved in reselling a piece of stolen jewelry as he explains to Bunny how crime doesn't pay - financially anyway. Often he steals something just because of the challenge involved in stealing it, which leads to interesting and varied stories for us to read. Bunny is his unwitting and later witting accomplice. He narrates the stories, as a sort of Watson to Raffles' Holmes.

These were very charming stories. If you like Sherlock Holmes and other victorian fiction then you will probably like these.

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Eight Enjoyable Tales of the Criminal Adventures of A. J. Raffles

A. J. Raffles was certainly not the first heroic rogue found in English literature, but E. W. Hornung's creation is among the most popular. Raffles himself was an amateur cracksman, an audacious, skilled burglar, one specializing in jewel and art objects. Raffles was contemporaneous with Sherlock Holmes, although, thankfully, Holmes never set his sights on Raffles, perhaps due in part to the fact that E. W. Hornung was married to Conan Doyle's sister.

Who is Raffles? A gentleman, a capable cricket player, a product of a respected British public school. Although his life style was in keeping with that of a British gentleman, his financial state was often precarious as he had no inherited wealth. With few career options, Raffles discovered that he had a talent for crime, especially those that required careful planning, as well as substantial self-confidence, even audacity. Surprisingly, few Victorian critics expressed concern with the moral implications of Hornung's stories, perhaps because that in the end Raffles does not entirely escape retribution. And even in the interim not all of Raffles exploits fully succeed, at least suggesting that a career in burglary does have limitations.

Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman (1898) is a collection of eight connected stories, each one flowing into the next. They include The Ides of March, A Costume Piece, Gentleman and Players, Le Premier Pas, Wilful Murder, Nine Points of the Law, The Return Match, and The Gift of the Emperor. Any fan of Sherlock Holmes will certainly enjoy these fascinating Victorian tales.

This Penguin Classic edition of Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman offers an extensive introduction, an eight-page chronology of E. W. Hornung's life and career, and a detailed listing of further stories, readings, plays, screenplays, articles, and literary criticism. Also, the editor, Richard Lancelyn Green, provides helpful end notes.

In his introduction Green observes that these tales can be viewed as an extension of the school story, where the prank becomes a crime and the school master a detective. I quite agree with Green's insight. I had wondered why the antics, actually crimes, of Raffles and his chum Bunny had vaguely reminded me of Rudyard Kipling's humorous school tales in Stalky and Company.

An unexpected connection: Raffles plays a significant role in a zany tale titled W. G. Grace's Last Case, a comedic tour de force by William Ruston published in 1984. The setting is London, however, in an alternative universe peopled by a remarkable cross section of literary creations from Watson and Lestrade to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. London is partly in ruins as the failed Martian invasion was only the year before (as so effectively reported at that time by the famous journalist H. G. Wells).

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