Böcker av E. W. Hornung

A Thief in the Night is the collection of stories detailing the exploits and intrigues of gentleman thief A. J. Raffles in late Victorian England. In public a popular sportsman, in private a cunning burglar with a weakness for valuable jewelery, Arthur Raffles, with the help of his side-kick Bunny Manders, always manages to thwart the investigations of Scotland Yard's Inspector Mackenzie.

Probably the most famous thief of all fiction, Raffles was a man-about-town and famous cricketer by day and a master burglar by night. When they were first issued at the turn of the century, these stories rivaled the popularity of Sherlock Holmes and established the prototype for The Saint, James Bond, and the other gentleman-rogue figures of popular fiction.

Stingaree's adventures have long delighted thousands of readers. He is a stylish bushranger, his English origins cloaked in mystery, who operates in New South Wales. He is, after Raffles, the most famous character that E.W. Hornung (1866-1921) ever created. Virtually unknown, however, is the fact that twelve years after the original stories appeared Hornung started to write a fresh batch of tales, relating Stingaree's subsequent history. For various reasons, the project was abandoned but the batch of stories that he completed are now brought together in book-form for the very first time. Peter Rowland is a well-known historian and biographer. He recently transcribed and edited two of Hornung's unfinished novels, His Brother's Blood and The Graven Image, and compiled a fresh collection of Hornung short stories, Tall Tales and short'uns. A revised and much-expanded edition of his 1999 biography of Hornung will appear shortly. (For more information, see www.peterrowland.org.uk).

E.W. Hornung (1866-1921) was one of the most prolific fiction-writers of his day, producing a stream of short stories and novels which were (and are) immensely popular. The brother-in-law of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he was the creator of a world-famous character called A.J. Raffles (the direct opposite of Sherlock Holmes), who played cricket by day and burgled by night. But many of his short stories, dispersed in obscure magazines and newspapers, are completely unknown to modern audiences - and until now, indeed, two of them have existed only in manuscript form. A dozen of them are brought together in the present exciting compilation produced by Peter Rowland, who recently deciphered the texts of two of Willie Hornung's unfinished books, 'His Brother's Blood' and 'The Graven Image' (published by ELT Press). (Rowland is currently at work on a revised edition of his 1999 biography of Hornung - see www.peterrowland.org.uk for more information.)

Gentleman thief Raffles is daring, debonair, devilishly handsome-and a first-rate cricketer. In these stories, the master burglar indulges his passion for cricket and crime: stealing jewels from a country house, outwitting the law, pilfering from the nouveau riche, and, of course, bowling like a demon-all with the assistance of his plucky sidekick, Bunny. Encouraged by his brother-in-law, Arthur Conan Doyle, to write a series about a public school villain, and influenced by his own experiences at Uppingham, E. W. Hornung created a unique form of crime story, where, in stealing as in sport, it is playing the game that counts, and there is always honor among thieves. The Complete Story - All four books in one volume.