This book is rather like the curate's egg - good in parts. Yes, the London scene pre-World War I is well set and the action does, on occasions, move swiftly along but on other occasions the plot seems long drawn out and there are, consequently, lengthy spells of inactivity.

I do love Raffles as a cha

A nod to The Merchant of Venice, with the Jewish money lender very much the villain in the same way. Unsurprisingly very racist given the time it was written. The only sympathetic note sounded for Hornung's "Shylock", Daniel Levy, is that he complains he would never get justice in a British court of

Fans of the amateur cracksman, A.J. Raffles, will likely want to read this final installment of his adventures. The change in format, though ... going from short stories to a novel ... works against it.

It is impossible not to sense the similarity in style between the Raffles stories and those of Co

I can see why the readers were disappointed when this novel first came out, but it's not bad really, just less of a typical Raffles theft story and somewhat drawn out. There's more place for character development though and I especially liked the rarity in a Victorian novel - a strong female charact

An interesting read....the very British phrases and words made it a tougher read than expected. His style of writing is unusual compared to most of the authors I have read before this. I missed some of the action and some of the play-on-words while winding my way through this book. But, it was a fas

First i want to say that A.J. Raffles and Harry "Bunny" Manders have the most beautiful friendship in book that i ever read! Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are have a beautiful friendship too but A.J. Raffles and Bunny friendship is on different level in my opinion. In this book, the story start wh