Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman (E.W. Hornung, 1899)

 

There's an old saying, 'Don't judge a book by its cover.'  That seems a reasonable way to look at things, right?  Don't assume that what you see on the outside is an indication of what's inside.  Some part of me, deep down, wonders if this is why the classic Penguin Books cover is so plain.  There's a promise that comes with that cover, that what you find within its pages is going to be worth your time, even with a bare minimum of indication from the front as to what's inside.

That was what drove me to pick this up, initially.  I saw the telltale 'Vintage Penguin' spine on the shelf at St. Vincent de Paul, on a book title and author I hadn't heard of, and reached up to take it in hand, give it a closer look, and see what I had found.  I had initially thought it was an actual vintage edition, though this quickly changed once I had it in hand; I probably should have known better, as the actual vintage Penguins often have spines that appear upside-down to a modern English-language sensibility (not to mention that the actual vintage edition of this particular book was a green cover Penguin).  In any case, my interest was further piqued by the short paragraph on the back cover telling me it's tales of a gentleman thief, and the book's dedication reading "TO A.C.D. THIS FORM OF FLATTERY".  Needless to say, that set of initials in a work of late-Victorian-era crime fiction gets my attention, so I was happy to see what Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman had to offer me.

One of the things I really enjoy about classic books being published by Penguin is that they usually include some amount of context for the reader, whether in the form of an appendix full of notes to help with cultural things that may not be clear to modern audiences (in this case, the most obvious case where I needed this was when reference to "fagging" showed up very quickly in the first story, due to the title character and the Watson-style narrator having been at school together), or an introduction that gives a sense of the context in which the work was introduced or simply a bit of a bio of the author.  In this particular book, that introduction was somewhat mind-blowing simply in the way that it gives a bit of background not only on Hornung, but even on Arthur Conan Doyle; Hornung was married to Doyle's sister, and was apparently spurred to write these stories, upon suggesting the gentleman-thief idea, at Doyle's insistence.  Indeed, this seems to be one of the first examples, if not the first, of the the gentleman-thief trope in fiction.  But it goes further; at the end of this book, the titular Raffles purposefully goes over the railing of a ship, many miles from shore, and it's not entirely clear if he has survived (this intended as a way to end the series of stories, similarly to Sherlock Holmes going over Reichenbach Falls).  Due to the popularity of the stories, Hornung was convinced to come back and write more, revealing that Raffles had indeed escaped intact; Doyle himself later made use of this same device in bringing Holmes back in later years.

There's a common view that, because of the relationship between Doyle and Hornung and the nature of these stories focusing on the criminal rather than the sleuth, these are somehow an "inversion" of Holmes.  That seems a bit of a misinterpretation of what is at work here; an inversion of Sherlock Holmes must, by necessity, be a character in the shape of Dr. James Moriarty, the sort of character who wields the same powers as Holmes but uses them for criminal gain and the material enrichment of themselves, rather than enjoying simply solving the puzzle for the greater good, as Holmes himself does.  This does not describe A.J. Raffles, at all.

So, what is it that this thin paperback actually contains, then?  Unlike most instances of the gentleman-thief archetype, A.J. Raffles is in it for profit, not for the fun of it.  While the character clearly enjoys the game, as it were, and claims he's but an amateur, he engages in his cracksmanship as much for a way of making his living as for the challenge and rush of the crime itself.  He has no apparent job outside of simply living the appearance of a proper upper-class gentleman; all of his income seems to come from either gambling (he's introduced at the end of a poor night of Baccarat for the narrator, Harry "Bunny" Manders) or his heists.  This book, the first of an eventual four dealing with Raffles and Bunny, contains nine stories, each detailing a criminal escapade.  Most of these are, as could be expected of a gentleman-thief, heists, though not all successful.  The stories are perhaps less stand-alone than might be expected of a collection like this, where most of them were previously printed in magazines; there are numerous callbacks to prior stories as you go through, with one of the stories even being a direct sequel to an earlier one.

Raffles isn't exactly a likeable character.  Admittedly, we're seeing him through Bunny's eyes, and Bunny has known him long enough that many of Raffles's less endearing traits are coming across in his view as 'Oh, that's just what he's like.'  There's a repeated plot beat of Raffles assuming that some machination of his or another as part of the heist they're involved in is just going to be obvious to Bunny, then getting huffy about it when Bunny doesn't understand what he's supposed to have done.  This comes across as rather less charming than "Elementary, my dear Watson" does; one would expect that when a heist requires two people working to pull it off, both people should necessarily be on the same page.

That said, I did enjoy the stories here, and definitely want to get my hands on the other three books.  Hornung was clearly having some fun with the concept, and did his research; apparently, some of the tactics that Raffles makes use of (particularly his way of getting through windows) actually saw a rise in their usage by real-life burglars after the stories were published.  Many of the characters and storylines also based largely on real people and events; a recurring police-detective character, Mackenzie of Scotland Yard, is directly inspired by Melville Macnaghten.  I do find myself wondering where the further books might go, however; unlike the case of Holmes, where his return would be a surprise but wouldn't likely have any significant dangers for the sleuth, Raffles goes over the railing because Mackenzie has caught him in the act and has warrants based on two other heists as well, so his return from the apparently-dead wouldn't be a case where he could keep his old identity.  That in itself suggests that the further books might have some interesting twists; if A.J. Raffles can't be A.J. Raffles, what can he do to maintain the 'gentleman' side of gentleman thief?