Customer Reviews

Thief in the Night: Further Adventures of A. J. Raffles, Cricketer and Cracksman, A

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I was ahgast while reading customer reviews of Lawrence Block's "Burglars Can't be Choosers" to read the comment, "This book is admirable from the standpoint that Mr. Block invented a new mystery genre." Not so, for in the 1900s, there was E.W. Hornung. While his brother-in-law's creation Sherlock Holmes was popular, Hornung created something of a anti-Holmes in the form of a gentleman thief named A.J. Raffles. Raffles is charming, yet vicious (which the reader will see in this book). The prose style of "A Thief in the Night" can be most closely compared to Doyle's "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes". Expect suspense, clever plots, and one addictive thief. I highly recommend this book and the earlier Raffles books to anyone who enjoys both Lawrence BLock and Arthur Conan Doyle.

H. R. F. Keating wrote (in Henderson's Crime & Mystery Writers) "I put E. W. Hornung's stories about A. J. Raffles, gentleman cracksman, squarely besides the Holmes tales of Conan Doyle (Hornung's brother-in-law). Both sets of stories seem to me to have that feeling of absolute rightness, perhaps the surest way of distinguishing that hard to define thing, 'the classic.'"