A selection of the best classic crime stories featuring the much-loved rogue, Raffles

‘Why should I work when I could steal? Why settle down to some humdrum uncongenial billet, when excitement, romance, danger, and a decent living were all going begging together? Of course, it’s very wrong, but we can’t all be moralists’

Dashing man about town, first-class cricketer and master burglar: Raffles is the ultimate gentleman thief. Here we find the debonair rogue cracking a jeweller’s safe on Bond Street, stealing from the nouveau riche, spiriting away a priceless pearl, outwitting the law at every turn – and, of course, bowling like a demon – all with the assistance of his plucky sidekick Bunny Manders. This new selection of Ernest Hornung’s much-loved crime stories is taken from his three Raffles collections, The Amateur Cracksman, The Black Mask and A Thief in the Night.

Ernest William Hornung was born in Middlesborough in 1866 and was educated at Uppingham School. He spent two years in Australia as a private tutor and worked briefly as a clerk in London before devoting his time to writing. Hornung was a member of the same cricket club as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle. He eventually married Conan Doyle's sister, Connie. Hornung wrote several novels – including A Bride from the Bush (1890) and Stingaree (1905) – as well as a book of verse, but his fame rests upon his creation of Raffles the gentleman thief, considered the first antihero figure of modern crime fiction.