Publisher's Synopsis
Introducing Simon Carne, a gentleman thief predating both E. W. Hornung's A. J. Raffles and Maurice Leblanc's Ars�ne Lupin. The British Viceroy first meets Carne while traveling in India. Charmed, he invites the reclusive hunchbacked scholar to London, little suspecting that his guest is actually an adventurer and a master of disguise. Carne-aided by his loyal butler, Belton-embarks on a crime spree, stealing from London's richest citizens and then making fools of them by posing as a detective investigating the thefts. Boothby was a prolific Australian novelist and writer, noted for sensational fiction in variety magazines around the end of the nineteenth century. He lived mainly in England and is best known for such works as the Dr Nikola series; about an occultist criminal mastermind who is a Victorian forerunner to Fu Manchu, and Pharos, the Egyptian. Rudyard Kipling was his friend and mentor and his books were remembered with affection by George Orwell.
