I’m thinking of doing an adaptation featuring E.W. Hornung’s characters, Raffles the master jewel thief and Bunny Manders, his sidekick. The stories are clever and elegant, and there’s a sly critique of the class system built into each one.
The Raffles stories were written at the same time as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, and were a kind of inversion of the detective-and-his-sidekick genre. This is not surprising since Hornung, interestingly, was part of Conan Doyle’s family, having married his sister Constance in 1893. Raffles, as a perpetual invited guest, mingles with the upper class but is, in fact, a master cracksman who makes his living by stealing from his wealthy acquaintances. His adventures are detailed by his “Watson,” Bunny Manders, a struggling journalist who became friends with the young Raffles while they attended school together. The first of Raffles’ adventures, “The Ides of March,” appeared in the June 1898 edition of Cassell’s Magazine. Although Sherlock Holmes would forever remain the most popular fictional character, Raffles rapidly became the #2 most popular fictional character of the time.
In my adaptation, I would create a new plot, and, since the characters are in the public domain, make them both women.