Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman

Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully entertaining
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Evil thieving Sherlock Holmes
Review: 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 stoires, as a sort of Watson to Raffles' Holmes.

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