Raffles Holmes & Company [Paperback]

John Kendrick Bangs (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 31, 2003

In Raffles Holmes

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Penzler Pick, April 2002: While Sherlock Holmes remains one of the most famous people who ever lived (George Bernard Shaw claimed his only equals were Jesus Christ and Hamlet in terms of recognition), his popularity was briefly equaled (or nearly so) during the late Victorian and early Edwardian eras by a figure much more obscure today: A.J. Raffles, the amateur cracksman, gentleman jewel thief, and noted cricketer.

And while Arthur Conan Doyle is a name known to every literate soul, Raffles's creator is hardly a household name. Curiously, E.W. Hornung, the author of a couple of dozen books between 1890 and 1923, was Doyle's brother-in-law. It seems likely that he created his famous gentleman crook to tweak the nose of the stuffy Doyle by making a rogue the hero of his own books.

John Kendrick Bangs was a hugely popular American humorist during the same years in which Doyle and Hornung flourished, and he practically made a career of writing parodies of their two famous protagonists.

Among Bangs's works are The Pursuit of the House-Boat, The Enchanted Type-Writer, and The Dreamers: A Club, in all of which Holmes appears as a dead man--a ghost, as it were--with other well-known characters.

Bangs also wrote Mrs. Raffles, about a female jewel thief, and topped it off by writing R. Holmes & Co. in 1906, in which the progeny of Sherlock Holmes and A.J. Raffles's daughter stars as the titular character.

While some of the humor has dated a good deal, the nine stories that make up the current volume are often amusing, especially as Holmes finds himself torn between his instincts to steal and his desire to catch criminals.

For those who have never read the original stores about A.J. Raffles, I recommend that you find a copy of The Amateur Cracksman, Raffles, or A Thief in the Night. I assume you've read the original Sherlock Holmes stories, or you wouldn't even think of browsing in the mystery section. Once you've read all of the real thing, the works of John Kendrick Bangs make a pretty good addition to the shelves. --Otto Penzler

Product Details

• Paperback: 108 pages
• Publisher: Wildside Press (January 31, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1587156318
• ISBN-13: 978-1587156311
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,457,113 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Frivolous fun for the un-serious Sherlockian, August 5, 2005

By 

Allyn Gibson (Raleigh, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Raffles Holmes & Company (Paperback)

The book is frivolous fun. It's serious, but it's not meant to be serious. Frivolous.

John Kendrick Bangs was one of the leading American humorists of the first decade of the twentieth century. Occasionally, he'd turn his pen toward satirizing Sherlock Holmes, the great consulting detective. And in 1906 he wrote a novel, R. Holmes & Co., about the adventures of Raffles Holmes, son of Sherlock and grandson of A.J. Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman.

Raffles? you say. Raffles was the creation of E.W. Hornung, brother-in-law to Holmes' creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Where Holmes was a detective, Raffles was a thief and always one step ahead of the law. Bangs decided to put the two characters together and see what came of it. The result was Raffles Holmes, who had a touch of his father's thirst for justice and his grandfather's thirst for larcenous danger. And it's downright funny.

Don't expect this novel to fit seamlessly with the Sherlock Holmes canon, because it doesn't. And it absolutely doesn't fit with Raffles. It doesn't fit well -at all- with Raffles. It fits tolerably well with Holmes, surprisingly. I would juggle the dates given in the second chapter (which is the "secret origin" chapter, how Raffles Holmes came to be), moving it from the early 1880s after Holmes met Watson to the late 1870s, when Holmes was in private practice and may have shared a few adventures with Reginald Musgrave. (No, this isn't one of those adventures, and Watson doesn't appear in the narrative.) The trickier question is where it all fits for Raffles. Raffles simply isn't old enough to be Raffles Holmes' grandfather. Hence, Raffles Holmes must actually be Raffles' nephew, that his mother is not (as Raffles Holmes believes) Raffles' daughter but his heretofore unknown sister, posing as Raffles' daughter for similar reasons as the Stapledons posed as brother and sister in Doyle's great novel, "The Hound of the Baskervilles," to pull off a scam. Raffles Holmes, for whatever reason, doesn't know this, but this fits better for Holmes and Raffles.

I won't call this a great novel. It's a -fun- novel. A goofy novel, and one deserving of greater recognition from both fans of the Great Detective and the Amateur Cracksman.