Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman is a collection of eight short stories about a young man who turns to burglary to earn some money. He is joined by ‘Bunny’, who he knew as a boy at their public school. Together they burgle jewellery shops and the homes of the nouveau riches. Thanks to Raffles’ meticulous planning they are only caught in the act once.
Hornung wrote about Raffles, a middle-class ex-public schoolboy, at the suggestion of his brother-in-law, Arthur Conan Doyle. The stories are very much a product of their time (they were first published in 1899). They are gentle stories with no sex or violence, and the use of foul language in such stories was almost unheard-of in those days. The descriptions of people and places are good, and anyone who has seen any of the numerous adaptations of Sherlock Holmes will be able to picture the scenes and people. The references to cricket and to Raffles’ skill at the game make the stories very English. There are notes at the end of the book so that anybody who doesn’t understand the terms and references can look them up.
In some ways the book is disappointingly short. Of 180 pages, a quarter is taken up by the notes at the end. There’s an additional 40 pages of introduction at the start, which gives interesting information about E. W. Hornung and the writing of the stories. As Hornung wrote more than eight stories featuring Raffles, it would have been nice to have more of them in the same book.
