Raffles

The Raffles books follow A. J. Raffles, a celebrated amateur cricketer who secretly supports himself through burglary, and Harry “Bunny” Manders, the former schoolmate who becomes his accomplice and narrator. Hornung reverses the Holmes-and-Watson pattern by placing ingenuity, loyalty and detection on the criminal side, while the clubs, chambers, cricket grounds and wealthy houses of late Victorian London expose the insecurity beneath gentlemanly respectability.

The core sequence comprises three story collections—The Amateur Cracksman, The Black Mask and A Thief in the Night—and the full-length novel Mr. Justice Raffles. The 2026 Penguin Classics volume Raffles, Gentleman Thief is retained as an unnumbered selection drawn from the three collections; it is not treated as a fifth original volume or as a replacement for the complete books.