Raffles stories and adaptations

Between 1898 and 1909, Hornung wrote a series of 26 short stories, two plays, and a novel about Raffles and his fictional chronicler, Harry "Bunny" Manders.

[6] Hornung dedicated the first collection of stories, The Amateur Cracksman, to his brother-in-law, Arthur Conan Doyle, intending Raffles as a "form of flattery.

"[1] In contrast to Conan Doyle's Holmes and Watson, Raffles and Bunny are "something dark, morally uncertain, yet convincingly, reassuringly English.

Then begins their "professional" period, exiled from Society, in which they are straightforward thieves trying to earn a living while keeping Raffles's identity a secret.

They finally volunteer for the Boer War, where Bunny is wounded and Raffles dies in battle after exposing an enemy spy.

The "classic" Raffles elements are all found in the first stories: cricket, high society, West End clubs, Bond Street jewellers – and two men in immaculate evening dress pulling off impossible robberies.

Raffles is, in many ways, a deliberate inversion of Holmes – he is a "gentleman thief", living at the Albany, a prestigious address in London, playing cricket for the Gentlemen of England and supporting himself by carrying out ingenious burglaries.

They met initially at school and then again on the night Bunny intended to commit suicide after writing bad cheques to cover gambling debts.

Mackenzie was based on Melville Leslie Macnaghten, the Chief Constable of the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard, according to Richard Lancelyn Green.