The Raffles anthology is filled with wit and adventure for lovers of Victorian and Edwardian crime stories. Many of the stories develop the friendship between Raffles and Bunny while also focusing on enjoyable robbery attempts and daring escapes.
A Pair Of Thieves
A.J. Raffles is cunning and always quick to come up with one scheme after another. Though Raffles is a thief ,he has his own twisted sense of ethics. "Why work when you can steal?" he tells his friend, "And the distribution of wealth is wrong anyway."
The reader is also quick to see that even though Raffles is a thief, the people he steals from are far worse than he is. They are usually reprehensible and arrogant with their wealth. Hornung clearly knows whose side he is on.
Hornung also isn't afraid to give his anti-hero a dark side. Raffles is willing to kill in one story and in another he plots a very ghoulish demise for another character. He also takes advantage of Bunny on a regular basis. But Raffles is very intelligent and has a sense of fairness that wouldn't allow himself to steal from a friend or betray Bunny.
Bunny Manders on the other hand is the opposite of Raffles. An old schoolmate of the amateur thief, Bunny reunites with his old friend after Raffles encourages him to rob a jewelry shop to pay off some debts. A much less self-assured character, he is charmed by Raffles' personality and his own desire for money to ignore any guilt that he would have about breaking the law. "Name the crime and I'm your man," he tells his partner before their first caper.
Bunny can be whiny and gullible at times, but somehow adorable. In their first story, "Ides of March," Bunny doesn't realize that his friend is a thief until they are at the jewelry store, even though Raffles drops obvious hints beforehand. Despite his naivete, Bunny is very loyal to his friend and never gives him up even though he is captured by various police officers and robbery victims
Stories Of Crime, Adventure, And Friendship
So many of these stories are personal favorites, such as "La Premiere Pas," an exciting story in which Raffles recounts his early days in Australia and how he got involved in crime. Some of the darker ones are the best, such as "A Willful Murder" which explores how far Raffles would go against a competitor and "The Fate of Faustina" which deals with a romance between Raffles and a young woman that ends tragically.
Bunny also gains some focus in some stories like the touching, "The Spoils of Sacrilige" where the duo robs Bunny's childhood home and Manders encounters memories of himself and his family. Bunny also reveals in the bittersweet "Out of Paradise" how much he had given up by following Raffles' life of crime mainly the trust of his then-fiancee.
About The Author
Ernest William Hornung was born in 1866. He was educated in Uppingham and spent most of his life in England, France, and Australia. He wrote many books, such as Stingaree (1905) and A Bride from the Bush (1890) based on his Australian experiences.
In 1886, he married Constance Doyle, Arthur Conan Doyle's sister. Raffles first appeared in 1898 in Cassell's Magazine and Hornung wrote three short story collections, a novel, Mr. Justice Raffles, and co-wrote a play, Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman. His only child was killed in WWI in 1915. He then moved to France where he died in 1921.
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