FOUR JUST MEN. Syndicated, 1959-60. Sapphine Films / ITC Release. “Inspired by ‘The Four Just Men’ of Edgar Wallace.” Starred Richard Conte as Jeff Ryder, Dan Dailey as Tim Collier, Vittoria de Sica as Ricco Poccari, and Jack Hawkins as Ben Manfred. Co-starred Honor Blackman, Lisa Gastoni, Andrew Keir, and June Thorburn. Executive Producer: Hannah Fisher.

   When their Commanding Officer from their days in the WWII invasion of Italy dies, four men gather together to honor him. They discover he had left them a large amount of money and a request they use it to fight injustice. They agree, but unlike the book, go their separate ways to star in each own adventure. At one point during every episode the featured star would contact one of the other four, usually on the phone and for just one scene.

         RICHARD CONTE

   Conte was lawyer Jeff Ryder who operated out of New York, and was aided by his law student assistant Vicky, played by June Thorburn.

“Crack Up.” Episode 22. Screenplay: Louis Marks, from a story idea by Lee Lolb. Directed by Anthony Bushell, Produced by Jud Kinberg. Guest Cast: Robert Shaw, Charles Irwin and Delena Kidd. The crossover scene featured Jack Hawkins as Ben Manfred.

   The discovery of a downed plane tied to a five year old mystery of missing gold leads the wife of the still missing pilot to hire the “four just men” to help her get to the plane and prove her husband had not stole the gold. The mystery was better than average but it was hard to care what happens to any of the one dimensional characters.

         DAN DAILEY

   Dailey was Tim Collier, an American reporter based in Paris. Honor Blackman played his girlfriend and secretary Nicole who among the four just men assistants played the largest role.

“Marie.” Episode 16. Screenplay by Gene Levitt and Louis Marks. Directed by Don Chaffey Produced by Jud Kinberg Guest Cast: Perlita Neilson, Alec Mango and Peggy Ann Clifford. The crossover scene was with Jack Hawkins as Ben Manfred.

   One of the better episodes, a thriller set against the backdrop of the Algerian War (1954-1962) and its effects on those in France. Collier and Nicole try to save the life of a suicidal young woman.

         VITTORIA DE SICA

   De Sica was Ricco Poccari, owner of the Hotel Poccari in Rome. Assisting him was his secretary Giulia played by Lisa Gastoni.

“Maya.” Episode 12. Written and Directed by William Fairchild. Produced by Sidney Cole. Guest Cast: Mai Zetterling, Peter Illing and Raymond Young. The crossover scene featured Richard Conte as Jeff Ryder delivering a vital plot point.

   Ah, the good old days of royalty. A spoiled Princess is in danger from those who are attempting a coup of an uranium rich country ruled by her wise and popular brother.

         JACK HAWKINS

   Hawkins played Ben Manfred, Member of Parliament and based in London. Andrew Keir was Jock, Manfred’s manservant and friend.

“Money to Burn.” Episode 21. Screenplay by Jan Read. Directed by Basil Dearden. Produced by Sidney Cole. Guest Cast: Ian Hunter, Charles Gray and Wolf Press. The crossover scene featured Richard Conte as Jeff Ryder.

   A General plans to stage a coup in a small democratic country. He tricks a British company that has been hired to print the country’s currency to help financially ruin the young Republic.

   The script tries hard to avoid any action or show any interest in plausibility as Manfred attempts to get the money back.

   The series was popular in England where it was number two in the ratings (Wagon Train was first) (Broadcasting, December 7, 1959). By August 1960 Four Just Men was in 159 markets (Broadcasting August 15.1960). According to Broadcasting (April 11, 1960), Four Just Men had sold in 16 other countries including Canada, Mexico and Czechoslovakia. ITV Board Chairman Michael Nidorf told Broadcasting (March 7, 1060) that the series had grossed nearly two million dollars.

   Much like the book, today the series is hopelessly outdated. They don’t make them like this any more for a reason. The premise is pure 1950s with older white men having all the answers including a view of morality that would not be accepted in today’s society. In an excellent review by “tanner” at blog double o section, he more fully discusses the flaws of the series.

   Four Just Men was an average 1950s era thriller TV series. Its production values were above average for the day but weak even compared to the 60s era shows that followed. Some of the scenes were shot on location but the series rarely took advantage of the scenery in places such as New York, Paris and Rome. The scripts and plots were limited by the half-hour format and the humorless TV dramatic style popular at the time but soon to change with the success of future series such as Peter Gunn, The Saint and The Avengers. The acting with few exceptions was a disappointment.

   The result was a usually passable thirty minutes of television worth sampling but not worth searching for the now out of print British DVD.

   For a review of the book Four Just Men you will find one by David L. Vineyard here on this blog.

GEORGES SIMENON – Pietr the Latvian. Penguin Books, softcover, 2013. Translated from the French by David Bellos. First US edition: Covici Friede, hardcover, 1931. First UK edition: Hurst, hardcover, 1933. Also published as Maigret and the Enigmatic Lett. Penguin, US/UK, paperback, 1963. First published serially in French as Pietr-le-Letton in the weekly Ric & Rac, No. 71-83, 19 July to 11 October 1930.

   Class-conscious interwar Paris, along with gritty Depression-era New York City and 1940s-era noir Los Angeles, are ideal urban settings for mystery writers seeking to place their protagonist in the heart of societies experiencing disruptive cultural and social changes.

   Georges Simenon’s (1903-1989) Pietr the Latvian, originally published in 1930, is a police procedural set primarily in interwar Paris. In this short novel, Simenon introduces the character of Inspector Maigret, one of the twentieth-century’s best-known fictional policemen. After this first Maigret novel, Simenon would go on to feature the pipe-smoking detective in in 74 additional novels and 28 short stories. (There were also numerous television adaptations.)

   Is there a robust market for Maigret in the English-speaking world? Hard to say, but Penguin Books surely must have sensed a profitable business opportunity when it decided that Penguin Classics, beginning in 2013, would publish English translations of all the Inspector Maigret novels.

   The first of the Maigret novels, Pietr the Latvian, both captivates and disappoints. The plot follows the Parisian inspector’s relentless pursuit of the eponymous international criminal. When Maigret discovers a man fitting Pietr’s description dead in a train car, the mystery only deepens. There appear to be two Pietrs, one dead and one still very much alive, residing in a Parisian hotel. Maigret’s chase takes him to unique locales within both Paris and Normandy. Along the way, he encounters a wide array of unique characters, including an American millionaire and his wife, a dancer, a Jewish hotelier, and a man who appears to be Pietr.

   Simenon’s prose succeeds at temporarily transporting the reader to a wet, windswept land where things aren’t always what they seem. Two of the novel’s memorable settings are the posh Majestic, a hotel on the Champs-Élysées and the Marais, the traditional Jewish quarter. The contrast between these two worlds within the larger city of Paris, as described by Simenon, is palpable.

   A notable subtext is the author’s critical analysis of the ethnic schisms and class divisions of interwar Paris. For instance, Simenon describes Inspector Maigret as both having a proletarian frame and being out of place at an elite Parisian hotel:

   And when Inspector Maigret attends the opening night of a play at the Gymnase Theatre to trail a wealthy suspect, “he stuck out as the only person not wearing formal attire” (p. 56). Simenon’s descriptions, both explicit and implicit, of the mores of the trans-Atlantic upper crust also merit the reader’s attention.

   Simenon’s treatment of the ethnic divide in Paris, namely between native Frenchmen and Eastern European immigrants, is also worth analyzing. The story hinges, in part, on how one Jewish female character from the Marais interacts with persons staying at the Majestic.

   Through Simenon’s writing, one catches a glimpse of how many Western Europeans at the time viewed emigrants from Russia, Poland, and the Baltics as both foreign and mysterious. A contemporary reader may bristle upon reading Chapter 14’s opening line, one dealing with the aforementioned Jewish character’s apartment:

   That said, Simenon’s treatment of Jewish and Eastern European characters is comparably innocuous when compared with much that was written in that era.

   It’s too bad, then, that this good detective story with an atmospheric setting suffers from uneven writing, at least in this translation. There are far too many instances within the text where the writing can only be best described as clunky. The translation also seems to be too literal. (I say this as someone who has translated French academic texts.)

   Take, for instance, this sentence from Chapter 12:

   Or this sentence from Chapter 10:

   Fortunately, not all of the work reads like this. It would be preferable to read sentences that not only captured Simenon’s original intent, but also flowed well in contemporary English. Simenon’s writing, or at least how it’s rendered here, is nowhere near as fluid as that of Arthur Conan Doyle or Raymond Chandler.

   With all that in mind, it’s worth mentioning that this will not be the only Inspector Maigret novel I shall read. I look forward to reading other translators’ rendering of Simenon’s work and to follow the life and times of one of the twentieth-century’s most beloved fictional detectives.

FRANCIS D. GRIERSON – The Smiling Death. Edward J. Clode, US, hardcover, 1927. First published in the UK: Geoffrey Bles, hardcover, 1927.

   Several times in this novel Inspector Sims and undercover criminologist Professor Wells note that coincidence is not remarkable. I concur. Thus I am not going to express astonishment because two amateur investigators discover a corpse near the police station Inspector Sims and Professor Wells happen to be visiting.

   Or because one of the amateurs falls in love at first sight with a passing horror-stricken face, a face that turns out to belong to the villain’s ward. Or because the other amateur falls in love at first sight with a girl in the street — in, mind you, not of; please pay attention, even if it’s not rewarding — whose father was ruined by the villain and whose restaurant is located in the house previously occupied by the recently discovered dead man.

   Or because one of the villain’s henchmen had his life saved during World War I by one of the amateurs. Or because — I could go on, but I guess you’re convinced by now of my tolerance.

   Since this is a thriller and the author early on discloses the villain’s identity, I take leave to quote:

   This bookseller villain — did some dastard mutter that that’s an oxymoron? — is another Moriarty, without the latter’s vast legions but with the same problem of ineptness and ingratitude on the part of his few minions.

   For those of you who, like me, always wondered what booksellers buy one half so precious as the stuff they sell, it has been revealed here in a novel slightly above Edgar Wallace’s average, with more and better humor than Wallace usually provided.

Editorial Comment: I’d have thought that this to be a detective novel so obscure that not a single trace of it would exist, even on the all-knowing Internet. I’d have thought wrong. Check out John Norris’s review of this very same title over on his blog, along with a list of all of the Inspector Sims & Professor Wells novels. (And, yes, John’s blog is the source of the cover image you see here as well.)

EVERYBODY WINS. Orion, 1990. Nick Nolte, Debra Winger, Will Patton, Judith Ivey, Jack Warden. Screenplay: Arthur Miller, based on his play of the same title. Director: Karel Reisz.

   Overall, I’d say I did — win, that is — even considering how unflinchingly flat the ending of this PI drama taking place in good old Connecticut is, but on the other hand, Leonard Maltin in his book on the movies calls this film a BOMB, and if so, either he or I are out of kilter, and I don’t think it’s me.    [FOOTNOTE 1.]

   PI Tom O’Toole (an appropriately scruffy but sometimes rather vacuous-looking Nick Nolte) is called in on the case by a woman named Angela. She’s a friend of the defendant, the nephew of the dead man, a well-known doctor who was brutally murdered in his home several months before. Already convicted and in jail, the nephew is a weakling who will probably not survive incarceration much longer.

   O’Toole is reluctant, but Angela’s charms prove too comely to overcome. Debra Winger (as Angela) is appropriately ditsy ad alluring all at once, and only gradually does she reveal that she knows more and more about the case — each time O’Toole is on the verge of withdrawing, she comes up with another shred of the story that keeps his interest, um, aroused.

   Angela is also the town whore, as O’Toole discovers too late, but he is too much in fascination with her to quit on the case, even if he wanted to. And the longer the case lingers on, the higher the corruption in the town (the cop cars say Highbury) seems to go. The crazed owner of a village garage slash motorcycle shop — he wants to start his own church, and he already as the beginnings of his own gang of disciples — seems to have confessed to the crime at one time, but it was still the doctor’s nephew who was railroaded into prison.

   All is not what it seems, or so it seems, and Twin Peaks has a lot to answer for. With all he quirky behavior involved, my greatest fear was that there would be no ending at all, but as I implied earlier, here I was wrong. The ending is one in which, as Angela says, “everybody wins,” and everyone and everything is satisfied, except justice (and just perhaps) Tom O’Toole. Just like real life.

   Whatever lack the story may have in a final punch, however, is at least partially made up for by the photography. New England never looked lovelier.    [FOOTNOTE 2.]

FOOTNOTE 1.   The point is this. How could anybody lump this film into the same category as Plan 9 from Outer Space and The Man Who Turned to Stone? I mean, give me a break.

FOOTNOTE 2.   Or so I thought until I saw the closing credits. Apparently the movie was filmed, at least in part, in Wilmington, North Carolina. All is not what it seems, all right.

[UPDATE] 03-26-14.   IMDb now tells me that some of this movie was filmed in Connecticut — Norwich, to be precise, a fact I hadn’t realized when I wrote this review.

DONOVAN. Granada TV, UK, 2004. 2 x 90 minute episodes. Samantha Bond, Ryan Cartwright, Tom Conti, Kara Wilson, Rhea Bailey, Jonathan Beswick, Anthony Edridge, Martin Scoles, David Fleeshman.

   Donovan was a one-off story with Tom Conti as the titular forensic scientist. Ten years ago he had a breakdown and resigned after a convicted murderer was acquitted on appeal after Donovan had been fond to have suppressed some evidence.

   Now a body is found with an identical method to the original crime. Donovan is pursuing a successful career writing about crimes he has investigated, but because of this connection is called in to do some forensics alongside the new scientist.

   (I would have thought that because of this connection he would have been the last person called in to do the work — but this is typical of the way that the obvious is simply glossed over to allow the situation to develop.)

   Some DNA is found at the scene and it turns out to be Donvan’s: he claims it is planted, but at first it is thought that he has carelessly left it while investigating.

   Later, when the victim turns out to be one of his wife’s lovers, it is used as evidence of Donvan’s guilt. Worse, he is suffering memory losses, especially of items that are important to the plot. Could he have committed the murder and forgotten about it?

   This had a strong cast, though Conti chose to play his part without any discernible emotions, and in truth I quite enjoyed it, but it just wasn’t plausible. It was done in all seriousness and presumably we were meant to take it seriously.

Editorial Comment:   This two-parter story has been packaged with three additional episodes from 2005 and is available on DVD in the US as DNA. See the image above.

EMMA LATHEN – Murder to Go. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1969. Pocket, paperback, September 1971 [the copy I read]. Several later printings.

   Counting A Shark out of Water, which appeared in 1997 and was the final one in the series, there were 24 “Emma Lathen” books in all — all of them featuring John Putnam Thatcher, senior vice-president of the Sloan Guaranty Trust, “the third largest bank in the world.”

   Whether he was ever promoted, I do not know. While I’ve read several of the books in the series over the years, I’d have to say it’s been twenty since last I did, and perhaps even thirty.

   And when I was a young man, what did I know of banking and investments, takeovers and mergers – the stuff, in other words, of the world of finance? Darned near nothing, and that’s reason I back then never did appreciated Thatcher’s adventures in mystery investigation anywhere nearly as well as I should have, I am sure.

   Before I get on any further with this review, let me add right here the fact that Emma Lathen was the byline of two ladies, Mary Jane Latsis and Martha Hennisart. You may be able to discern where the joint pseudonym came from, but from whence their alternative one, R. B. Dominic? (I seem to remember reading about it, and I think it was Jon Breen who uncovered this second identity of theirs, so maybe it was written up somewhere or another.)

   Queries: Is John Putnam Thatcher the first investment banker to be a repeating character in a series of detective stories? Query: Is Murder to Go the first instance of murder (fictional) related to a fast food franchise? (In this case, the Chicken Tonight Corporation.) Is Murder to Go the first fictional mystery involving mass poisoning via a commercial product? (The notorious Tylenol tampering case did not occur until 1982, so in this regard, it seems, the ladies Lathen were well ahead of any real-life case I can think of.)

   It is thus that the first death was accidental. The second, however, is decidedly not, and Thatcher, whose bank has a substantial stake in Chicken Tonight, is squarely in the middle of it.

   Lathen, which is how I will refer to both authors (and as female and in the singular) has a good eye and ear for how people really behave, both in the high echelons of the business world, and the lower – the franchisees who (of course) end up taking the heat – and the loss of business – the most. She also has a subtle “looking down the nose” and (through Thatcher) a non-approving way of looking at many situations, often to me in surprisingly humorous fashion. (Whoever thinks of bankers as stand-up comedians?)

    Here’s a lengthy quote from page 27:

   In this crisis situation that the head of Chicken Tonight is facing, Thatcher gives him high marks. From page 150:

   As a detective, Thatcher is blessed with both curiosity and a penchant for tidying up loose strings. See page 161 for a longer analysis along these lines. Unfortunately, there is only a small coterie of suspects, and with one of them behaving most curiously out of character, naming the killer is a feat that should be within the grasp of even the leisurely of armchair detectives. Such as myself, I hasten to add, and the rest of the novel is equally if not even more entertaining.

WILBUR DANIEL STEELE – The Way to the Gold. Doubleday, hardcover, 1955. No paperback edition.

THE WAY TO THE GOLD. 20th Century Fox, 1957. Jeffrey Hunter, Sheree North, Barry Sullivan, Walter Brennan, Neville Brand, Jacques Aubuchon, Ruth Donnelly. Based on the novel by Wilbur Daniel Steele. Director: Robert D. Webb.

   Buried somewhere deep inside the three hundred and seventy-five pages of Wilbur Daniel Steele’s The Way to the Gold, there’s a taut adventure tale screaming to get out, and it’s just too bad it didn’t make it, poor thing.

   The story starts out like a Gold Medal Original, with Joe Mundy, a young loner embittered beyond his years, jailed for a killing he never done. Joe’s cell mate turns out to be legendary outlaw Ned Glaze, the last of the old-time train robbers, who still holds secret the hiding place of his last haul, a hundred thousand in gold taken in a heist that cost the lives of his partners.

   And over the course of about a hundred pages we get to where we knew we were going all along: Joe is a free man, out of jail and on his way to the gold.

   Things, of course, just ain’t that simple. Joe’s passport to the small town where the loot is stashed turns out to be a genial, cherubic and very mysterious character named Hannibal, and Joe very quickly finds himself parked in a boarding house populated with surviving relatives of Ned Glaze’s old gang, who seem to think they have a claim on the money. There’s also a hard-boiled waitress with a soft spot for embittered loners and a tough-but-friendly cop who’s clearly got cards he ain’t showing.

   Steele takes these promising characters, and over the course of the next hundred-and-some pages, does nothing very much with them as Joe and the story get swallowed up in the trivia of getting along in a small town. And I mean “trivia”. And I mean “swallowed” as The Way to the Gold seems to lose its way somewhere in a novel of suburban life in the mid-50s.

   By the time we actually get on our way to the gold, a couple hundred more pages have grunted their way past in constipated movement — at which point we get to where I suspected we were headed all along, and if you didn’t see it coming a long ways back, you just wasn’t looking.

   Two years later, Twentieth Century Fox turned this into nothing more than a run-of-the-mill movie with a low-voltage cast, but they did rather well by it. Direction was entrusted to Robert D. Webb, whose films were never all that memorable, but the writing chores were handed to one Wendell Mayes, a writer whose name should be better known.

   Mayes was responsible for blockbusters like The Poseidon Adventure and The Spirit of St. Louis, but he also brought in smaller, quirkier efforts like The Hanging Tree and From Hell to Texas in fine form.

   Here he trims away the fat and returns the story to Gold Medal Original country, where it really always belonged. Gone is the minutia of small town life and endless domestic complications, replaced by a tight, fast-moving narrative that still takes time to appreciate the characters.

   Jeffrey Hunter comes off well as bitter, untrusting Joe Mundy, played off against Sheree North in full Kim-Novak-mode as the hard-boiled waitress. Barry Sullivan shows off his type-cast toughness as a local lawman who seems too smart to be hanging around this one-whore town, but pride of place must go to the family of dim-wit bad guys, winnowed down to four by writer Mayes, and perfectly realized by Walter Brennan as a senile old crackpot, Ruth Donnelly as a matriarch in the Lady Macbeth mode, Neville Brand as the brawn of the outfit, and especially Jacques Aubuchon, a busy actor you never heard of, absolutely perfect as the totally inadequate “brains” of the gang.

   Given Maye’s ability to impart fast touches of character, and director Webb’s gift for getting out of the way, this cast runs quite capably with a story that really moves, somehow giving the impression that there are real people involved in this paperback plot and bringing things to a fast, satisfying conclusion. The Way to the Gold turns out as a fun thing to watch and a film much much better than its source.

MY FAVORITE SPY. RKO Radio Pictures, 1942. Kay Kyser, Ellen Drew, Jane Wyman, Robert Armstrong, William Demarest, Harry Babbitt, Ish Kabibble. Director: Tay Garnett.

   I don’t have much to say about this movie. Either you like band leader and long-time radio star Kay Kyser in the role of a movie hero, or you don’t. His overripe meekness and exaggerated gestures of astonishment and surprise can wear on you awfully quickly.

   He’s no Pee Wee Herman, though. I think of him as an early Woody Allen type, southern style. Utterly cornball, in other words, but still funny.

   His orchestra plays only a minor role in this one, as Kay is asked by the army to help unroot some spies working out of the night club where he and his band are playing, The only problem is that he’s not able to tell his wife what he’s doing, and their honeymoon is constantly being interrupted. You can see what this means, and you can take it from there.

MARIANNE MACDONALD – Die Once. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, May 2003. No US paperback edition. Published in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton, hardcover, 2002.

   Antiquarian book dealer Dido Hoare loses a recent but good customer in an apparent suicide. Of course, things are never what they seem, so when the suicide is investigated, Dido finds herself involved as she inventories his collection for the firm of lawyers that’s handling the estate and gets increasingly drawn into the maze the case turns into.

   The book dealing is nicely integrated, as usual. The plot is somewhat too intricate (and perhaps too drawn out) to be completely involving, but this is certainly a recommended bibliomystery.

       The Dido Hoare series —

1. Death’s Autograph (1996)

2. Ghost Walk (1997)
3. Smoke Screen (1999)
4. Road Kill (2000)
5. Blood Lies (2001)

6. Die Once (2002)
7. Three Monkeys (2005)
8. Faking It (2006)

BARRY PEROWNE – Raffles Revisited, The Adventures of a Famous Gentleman Crook. Harper & Row, hardcover, 1974. Hamish Hamilton, UK, hardcover, 1974.

   E. W. Hornung only wrote three collections of short stories about amateur cracksman A.J. Raffles, and a disappointing novel (Mr. Justice Raffles), so in 1932 Montague Haydon, editor of the British magazine Thriller had the bright idea of continuing the character. He approached Leslie Charteris, creator of the Saint, who turned him down, and next the turned to Philip Atkey, Australian nephew of writer Bertram Atkey, who had already continued his uncle’s popular tales of cracksman Smiler Bunn.

   Writing as Barry Perowne, Atkey updated Raffles to the 1930’s and involved him in adventures along the lines of the Saint and other durable desperadoes from Thriller. The writing was good, and the tales enjoyable, but the war and the paper shortage ended both Thriller and Raffles.

   In 1950 Perowne had the bright idea of bringing Raffles back yet again, but this time in his original form, in short stories set in the original period and milieu. Raffles, the gentleman cricketer of the M.C.C. (Marlebone Cricket Club) and the Albany and his pal Bunny Manders were back and in the opinion of many if some of Hornung’s atmosphere and decadence are gone the writing and the plots have improved no end.

   The new stories appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, The Saint Mystery Magazine, and John Bull. They were an immediate critical and popular hit. In addition Perowne gave the perpetually dumb Bunny half a brain, a device that helped the stories no end, and added Raffles sister Dinah to the mix.

   The stories in Raffles Revisited are:

      The Grace and Favor Crime

   Raffles and Bunny foil a German spy ring, thanks to a dog that doesn’t know its master and a master who doesn’t know his dog, and Raffles is offended by a bribe.

      Princess Amen

   Raffles employs a mummy case to crack a safety deposit box in a bank and comes close to suffocating, save for fast thinking by the fence Ivor Kern and Bunny’s ability to read hieroglyphics.

      Kismet and the Dancing Boy

   Raffles plays cupid while coveting a rare chess set.

      The Birthday Diamonds

   In Paris Raffles finds himself cracking a safe for a Parisian policeman in front of a room full of witnesses — and still gets the swag.

      The Dartmoor Hostage

   A cricket game at the prison uncovers an attempt to break in to Dartmoor, and a secret that turns a profit for Raffles.

      The Doctor’s Defense

   On a cruise Raffles and Bunny have to aid an old classmate set up as the fall guy in an international con game involving phony diamonds.

      The Gentle Wrecker

   Raffles breaks his oath to never rob a house he is a guest in to steal a ship’s figurehead and unite a pair of lovers by framing an innocent man.

      Six Golden Nymphs

   Raffles eludes the police by setting them to solve a murder that never happened.

      Man’s Meanest Crime

   Raffles foils the Anniversary Thief.

      The Coffee Queen Affair

   Raffles meets his American compliment and aids the Knickerbocker Kid in reform and romance, all to win a wager on who will be chosen the Coffee Queen.

      An Error in Curfew

   Raffles postpones lifting a fortune in jade to help a houseful of young ladies named after the days of the week.

      Bo Peep in the Suburbs

   Raffles has to rob a safe that is only out of sight for a few minutes every day.

      The Governor of Gibraltar

   Raffles becomes the envoy for his old school chum the Royal Governor of Gibraltar in order to help the husband of a charming and innocent con woman escape from a heavily guarded ship carrying gold bullion.

      The Riddle of Dinah Raffles

   While Raffles is in Australia Bunny discovers his sister is more than blood ken to the master cracksman.

   Later books in the series, Raffles of the Albany, and Raffles of the M.C.C. add a new twist to the stories with Raffles meeting historical personages like Winston Churchill (“The Baffling of Oom Paul”), Conan Doyle (“The Victory Match”), Oscar Wilde (“Dinah Raffles and Oscar Wilde”), and P.G. Wodehouse (“The Graves of Acadame”) among others.

   With the possible exception of August Dereleth’s Solar Pons stories, the Raffles pastiche are unique in that they established their own fan base beyond the original stories. I’ll confess I find them superior to Hornung in terms of plot and writing, and believe they stand alone as some of the most entertaining stories of their kind ever penned.

   Perowne is not the only author to continue Raffles adventures. John Kendrick Bangs wrote a series featuring Mrs. Raffles and another with the son of Sherlock Holmes and Raffles daughter, Raffles Holmes. Graham Greene penned a play, The Return of A.J. Raffles, and Alan Moore recently included Raffles as one of The League of Extraordinary Gentleman graphic novels. David Fletcher, creator of the British television series Raffles with Anthony Valentine wrote a novelization of the eleven stories in the series.

   The Perowne stories are well worth discovering even if you don’t care for the originals by Hornung. Perowne’s version of Raffles and Bunny are a charming pair of rogues who manage the balancing act of a career in crime while never endangering their standing as English Gentlemen or Raffle’s standing as England’s finest cricketer. How they manage that feat is a constant source of entertainment in probably the finest series of pastiche ever written.