"Who do you prefer - Holmes or Raffles ?" Topic

That, my dear fellows, is the question I put to you today. Conan Doyle's master detective or Conan Doyle's brother-in-law's master cracksman and amateur cricketer?

Do you know, I think I prefer Raffles.

1. Raffles

2. Holmes

3. Neither – they bore me tremendously and in equal measure

4. Both – how could,and why should, one pick between them ?

Holmes.

The books are good, Basil Rathbone is great, and even some of the modern versions are good.

I became a fan via the Enterprise holodeck and haven't looked back.

Never heard of Raffles.

Raffles?

Not seen a Raffles book for over 60 years. My dad had a couple of them, dating from the 1920s , which I read in my teens. I enjoyed them at the time. I think there was a Netflix series with a French character, obviously inspired by Raffles. Never read a Holmes book and only saw one episode of the series with Cumberbatch.

Holmes hands down. I say Leonard Nimoy play Holmes in the play "The 7% Solution" years ago in Detroit. He brought the house down when he told the female lead "I cannot show emotion".

There have been quite a few adaptations of Raffles in the cinema, on TV and on the radio.

If you can get BBC Radio4extrs the most recent radio adaptation is currently running there.

Raffles is like the anti-holmes – as a gentleman cricketer of limited means he is "forced" to turn to crime + the other option of turning professional and being paid to play is an abhorrent thought!). He generally only robs cads, he is very patriotic – he goes to South Africa when the queen needs more troops) and he knows that Scotland yard detectives aren't idiots.

I think the writing is more modern than that produced by his brother in law for his admittedly more famous creation.

Raffles? Isn't he the guy selling tickets in front of the neighborhood store?

Nope

Holmes. Not even close.

Holmes. The world's full of people who'd rather steal than work. People who invent a new career to make use of their talents are a lot less common.

"Raffles?"

A bar in Singapore. I don't know if they show Sherlock Holmes movies… ;-)

Raffles?

I'll take Jeremy Brett's portrayal of Sherlock Holmes everyday and twice on Sunday.

This Raffles character sounds vaguely familiar, I think I might have heard of him before?

So Holmes by default, for all that I'm not a huge fan.

Raffles or Arsene Lupin, that's another question – who's the best gentleman burglar?

That would be Flambeau.

The world's full of people who'd rather steal than work.

Raffles does bat for England.

Unpaid…as he is a gentleman, not a player.

And Raffles also did his bit in South Africa, for Queen and Country.

And he generally only robs bounders.

I didn't know Raffles was related to Holmes by way of his brother in law

Yes, 20th Maine beat me both to the point about the authors being related (leaving aside your witty misconstruction, dragon6) and about Raffles being a mirror-image of Holmes, even to their companion OF WHATEVER INTELLIGENCE. While I'm as familiar with the Conan Doyle stories as any literate person should be with those "good bad stories", must admit I know only Raffles from the 1930s David Niven movie (although there was a 1970/1980 British Television series which I found so 'smarmy" that I could not bear it). However, an interesting question which occurred to me some years back – regarding the Rathbone/Bruce pairing in film – might be, whether the rather blustering, blundering Watson there enacted is actually a fair representation of the original fictional character. After all, he's not only a medical Doctor, but doesn't Holmes on occasion detail him to do something important (?Hound of Baskervilles). That Raffles only steals from "cads" and "Bounders" (the delights of Historically accurate terminology!) is surely a way for Hornung to allow his anti-hero (when was that term first used, I wonder?) to go about his nefarious business – sorry, 'accomplishment" – without transgressing accepted literary/dramatic conventions, is not only obvious but suggestive of another tenuously related question; when, in movies or prose fiction, did a true villain first "get away with it"?

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