A. J. Raffles, A Gentleman-Thief: 27 Crime Tales in One Volume

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A. J. Raffles is an 'amateur cracksman' and a gentleman-thief who with his wit and ingenuity befools everyone to get what he wants. Raffles is an antihero. Although a thief, he never steals from his hosts, he helps old friends in trouble, and in a subsequent volume he may or may not die on the veldt during the Boer War. Additionally, the recognition of the problems of the distribution of wealth is a recurrent subtext throughout the stories. Raffles is, in many ways, a deliberate inversion of Sherlock Holmes on which he is based – he is a "gentleman thief", living at the Albany, a prestigious address in London, playing cricket for the Gentlemen of England and supporting himself by carrying out ingenious burglaries. He is called the "Amateur Cracksman", and often, at first, differentiates between himself and the "professors" – professional criminals from the lower classes.

Content:

The Amateur Cracksman

The Ides of March

A Costume Piece

Gentlemen and Players

Le Premier Pas

Wilful Murder

Nine Points of the Law

The Return Match

The Gift of the Emperor

The Black Mask; or, Raffles: Further Adventures

No Sinecure

A Jubilee Present

The Fate of Faustina

The Last Laugh

To Catch a Thief

An Old Flame

The Wrong House

The Knees of the Gods

A Thief in the Night

Out of Paradise

The Chest of Silver

The Rest Cure

The Criminologists' Club

The Field of Philippi

A Bad Night

A Trap to Catch a Cracksman

The Spoils of Sacrilege

The Raffles Relics

The Last Word

Mr. Justice Raffles

E. W. Hornung (1866–1921) was an English author and poet and also brother-in-law to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Hornung is known for writing the A. J. Raffles series about a gentleman thief based on a deliberate inversion of the Sherlock Holmes series. Hornung dedicated his creation as a form of flattery to Doyle.