The Amateur Cracksman, by E.W. Hornung

This is the first collection of stories - partly inspired by Sherlock Holmes and in fact written by Arthur Conan Doyle's brother-in-law - about master criminal Raffles and his reliable sidekick narrator. It was sold to me by a friend who said 'If you took the scene where Raffles the master criminal is getting reliable sidekick narrator to agree to do crime and replaced 'crime' with 'gay sex', it would make as much sense if not more.' This is true! E.W. Hornung also knew Oscar Wilde and named his son Oscar, and when Raffles never just has an 'arm' but always a 'splendid arm,' well, generations have wondered and indeed have not always felt they had to wonder very hard.

In terms of cunning crime highjinks, I could predict all the plots of these stories except one (though that one got me good.) I think I'm downstream of too much subsequent caper plotting. What I couldn't predict is when Raffles would fail - because though I call him a master criminal, he isn't at all in the near-supernatural mode of always getting away with it: he's a passionately motivated burglar who's good enough not to have been caught yet, but he routinely messes up. Partly I suspect this is about not being allowed to let your burglar get off scott free, but I like the effect of it. These stories are efficient, feel psychologically accurate - even the contrivance of having Raffles hate explaining his plots so as to hold back a surprise for the reader fits in with the way Raffles is generally annoying - and I like the network of explicit metaphors (cricket, crime) with the implicit one (being gay.)