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Raffles of the M.C.C.
252 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1979
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About the author
Barry Perowne
51 books2 followersBarry Perowne is a pseudonym of Philip Atkey who was born in the New Forest area of Wiltshire.
He left school at the age of 14 to work for a carnival equipment manufacturer; he used his experiences in this line of work in his later works on carnival showmen who, with their families and caravans, took up winter quarters in the factory yards. He later became secretary to his uncle Bertram Atkey before editing two magazines that published humorous and romantic fiction. In addition he wrote short stories for several other magazines as well as a couple of novels about Dick Turpin, the highwayman, and Red Jim, the first air detective.
By agreement with the E W Hornung estate he continued the Raffles series created by that author. His first stories of the amateur cracksman appeared in the British magazine 'The Thriller' with the sophisticated cracksman's adventures put into contemporary settings.
In 1933 he married Bertram Atkey's daughter; their marriage was to produce one daughter and ended in divorce in 1948.
He joined the Army in 1940 and served three years in the infantry and three years in the intelligence corps.
He continued to write his Raffles stories and many of them appeared in 'Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine'. Fourteen of the best of those stories appeared in 'Raffles Revisited' in 1974, a book which came some 40 years after his first published books about Raffles. His Raffles stories were considered by many critics to be far superior to those of Raffles' creator E W Hornung.
He also wrote under his own name, Philip Atkey, and 'Blue Water Murder' (1935), 'Heirs of Merlin' (1945) and 'Juniper Rock' (1952) were the results.
He also used the pseudonym Pat Merriman, 'Night Call' (1937) and in addition wrote under his own name, 'Arrest These Men!' (1932) being the first of such productions ... to be followed by many more, ending with 'A Singular Conspiracy', which is a crime fantasy based on an apocryphal meeting between Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Baudelaire.
He died on 24 December 1985.
He left school at the age of 14 to work for a carnival equipment manufacturer; he used his experiences in this line of work in his later works on carnival showmen who, with their families and caravans, took up winter quarters in the factory yards. He later became secretary to his uncle Bertram Atkey before editing two magazines that published humorous and romantic fiction. In addition he wrote short stories for several other magazines as well as a couple of novels about Dick Turpin, the highwayman, and Red Jim, the first air detective.
By agreement with the E W Hornung estate he continued the Raffles series created by that author. His first stories of the amateur cracksman appeared in the British magazine 'The Thriller' with the sophisticated cracksman's adventures put into contemporary settings.
In 1933 he married Bertram Atkey's daughter; their marriage was to produce one daughter and ended in divorce in 1948.
He joined the Army in 1940 and served three years in the infantry and three years in the intelligence corps.
He continued to write his Raffles stories and many of them appeared in 'Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine'. Fourteen of the best of those stories appeared in 'Raffles Revisited' in 1974, a book which came some 40 years after his first published books about Raffles. His Raffles stories were considered by many critics to be far superior to those of Raffles' creator E W Hornung.
He also wrote under his own name, Philip Atkey, and 'Blue Water Murder' (1935), 'Heirs of Merlin' (1945) and 'Juniper Rock' (1952) were the results.
He also used the pseudonym Pat Merriman, 'Night Call' (1937) and in addition wrote under his own name, 'Arrest These Men!' (1932) being the first of such productions ... to be followed by many more, ending with 'A Singular Conspiracy', which is a crime fantasy based on an apocryphal meeting between Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Baudelaire.
He died on 24 December 1985.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 1, 2024
13 tales of Raffles and Bunny, I gave the classic Raffles rating to the first 9 - but the last two were terrific fun. "A Venus at Lords" had Lillie Langtry and was great fun then there was "Black Mask and The Firefly" (with reference to Sherlock Holmes) it was brilliantly funny.
July 14, 2012
Not the original Raffles stories, but one of the pastiche collections. Alas, I have not yet read the original as created by EW Hornung (though I'm currently enjoying the 1970s tv series on DVD), so I have no idea how well this compares, either in fidelity to the tone of the original, or in quality of writing. It was simply the Raffles book that happened to be possessed by my local library in the dim and distant past, when the way one tracked down books one had heard of was to consult the library's copy of "Books in Print". I liked it well enough as a teenager to grab a copy when I saw it a few years ago, and thought I'd re-read it in conjunction with watching the DVDs.[return][return]I don't find it quite as good now as I remember it being thirty years ago, but that's a change in my reading tastes rather than a criticism of the book. It's still good fun, and staying on my bookcase. This collection includes 11 short stories, each a nicely constructed mystery/caper. Some of them also include as secondary characters historical figures that a contemporary reader at the time of publication would be expected to recognise, although in the period of the story they were as yet unknown to the public at large. I suspect that this conceit could prove irritating to some readers, but I enjoyed it.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews