Mr Justice Raffles Transcript (Green Penguin Book Club 16)

Green Penguin Music

Caroline: Welcome to Shedunnit. I’m Caroline Crampton.

And welcome back to Green Penguin Book Club, a series within Shedunnit that documents my journey of reading and discussing every crime or green title from the main Penguin series, in order. Our book today is Mr Justice Raffles by E.W. Hornung, Penguin 101. That's right, we are finally out of double digits!

This book was first published in 1909 and then joined the Green Penguin series in August 1937. It was the fourth and final volume from Hornung to feature his best-known character, the gentleman thief A.J. Raffles. You may remember that earlier in the Green Penguin Book Club series I discussed the first collection of Raffles stories with Darryl Jones back in April 2025; now we get to look at the last one. And crucially, Mr Justice Raffles is the only novel-length outing for Raffles. All of his other appearances are in short stories.

We also have something interesting happening with continuity in this four-book series. At the end of the second Raffles short story collection, The Black Mask, Hornung brought his hero's journey to an end by having Raffles and his bosom companion Bunny Manders both abandon their lives in London to enlist to fight in the Boer War. In the third collection, A Thief in the Night, Bunny flashes back to some earlier cases prior to their departure, and in this novel, Mr Justice Raffles, we are doing the same thing. The timeline isn't chronological between the four books, in effect.

There's yet another nice parallel here between Hornung and his brother in law, Arthur Conan Doyle. Just like Doyle, who killed off Sherlock Holmes in "The Final Problem" only to cave to popular demand (and offers of further publisher's fees) to resurrect the character again the following decade. With his third and fourth Raffles volumes that came out after he'd already given his series its ending, Hornung was doing something similar.

Joining me to discuss Mr Justice Raffles is Katie Lumsden, an author and freelance editor who has a great passion for nineteenth century literature. She runs the YouTube channel, Books and Things, where she reviews and recommends classics and historical fiction. She's also the author of three historical novels, with her newest, the upcoming The Christmas Tree Murders, marking her first foray into crime fiction.

Before we get into the book, though, I'll give my usual spoiler warning here. Until you hear me say that we are "entering the spoiler zone", you can safely listen without hearing major plot details. The timestamp for that point will also be in the episode description. After that, you can expect to hear major spoilers, up to and including the full solution to the mystery. And at the end of every episode, I ask my guest to award the book a rating, so stay tuned to the end to hear how many green penguins out of five Ronaldo gives this one and why.

We are now going to be entering the spoiler zone, so stop here if you haven't read the book yet and don't want to hear major plot details.

[Conversation coming soon]

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This episode of Shedunnit was produced and hosted by me, Caroline Crampton.

Many thanks to my guest, Katie Lumsden. Her first crime novel, The Christmas Tree Murders, comes out in November and you can find her talking about books right now on her YouTube channel, Books and Things. You can find a link to that, as well as everything we referenced today, in the episode description and at shedunnitshow.com/mrjusticeraffles. I also publish transcripts of every episode including this one; find them all at shedunnitshow.com/transcripts.

The next episode of Green Penguin Book Club will be keeping things in the family and covering The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle, so if you're reading along with me, that's your next target.

Shedunnit is edited by Euan McAleece and production assistance came from Leandra Griffith.

Thanks for listening.