Raffles: Bowled Over

by Richard Foreman Book 2 in the Raffles series.

First published 2012

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3.2(31)

Raffles chooses a target close to home when the financier Rupert Robert Fuller moves into the Albany. To distract the banker while the apartment is searched, he recruits the famous cricketer C. B. Fry. Bunny assists with the practical risks, but the operation becomes less predictable when Raffles is drawn to Fuller’s maid, Mary Flanagan.

The story combines the social theatre of late Victorian cricket with a burglary planned among London’s wealthy bachelors. Raffles’s ability to manipulate admiration normally protects him, yet his interest in Mary threatens the detachment on which his crimes depend. The theft therefore tests not only locks and timing but the friendship between Raffles and Bunny, who recognises that sentiment may be more dangerous than the police.

Fuller’s position as a financier makes the target more than a convenient rich man. The burglary relies on the same networks of reputation, credit and celebrity that make cricket a social passport for Raffles. The operation therefore turns respectable London against itself: the thief succeeds by understanding how eagerly wealthy men trust appearances that flatter their own sense of status.