The Amateur Cracksman

This 1899 collection introduced A. J. Raffles to the world and made the gentleman thief a fixture of crime fiction. By reputation he is a celebrated cricketer and an ornament of fashionable London; in secret he funds that life by robbing the very drawing rooms that welcome him. His old schoolfellow Bunny Manders, drawn into the first burglary out of desperation, becomes his accomplice and admiring narrator. Across these linked stories the two plan audacious thefts, outwit the dogged Inspector Mackenzie, and skirt disaster with more style than caution. Hornung, brother-in-law to Arthur Conan Doyle, built Raffles as the mirror image of Sherlock Holmes, and readers have been charmed by the reversal ever since. Offered here as a free PDF and EPUB edition.