Guy Boothby (1867–1905)

A romance/thriller/crime/adventure story. Our hero is a down to earth everyman australian who inexplicably switches to a Holmes level detective whenever the plot calls for it, and gets involved in the nefarious plans of Dr. Nikola through a sequence of badly plotted coincidences.
Our villain Dr. Nikola is a proto-bond villain complete with cat and suffering the usual personality defects. Absurdly convoluted plan, check! Inability to dispatch enemies, check!
Don't get me wrong there are things to like here. Theres some humour here and there, also the writing overall is pretty good in the technical sense. However while you as a reader can never tell what will happen next it doesn't feel like the author knew either.
The plot just wanders around aimlessly before the writer just seems to give up and retreat with the remains of his dignity.
An interesting historical piece for Bond or mesmerist villain fans.… (more)

Six connected stories in which Simon Carne infiltrates high society in late 1890s London and proceeds to rob it blind. He steals jewels, wedding presents, royal gold, rigs a horse race to win it, and thwarts an Irish bomb plot, while stealing the money meant to finance it. He even poses as a private detective to investigate the robberies he's conducted. All this with the help of his butler, Belton. They expose the folly of the British upper class like P.G. Woodhouse's Bertie Wooster and Jeeves might do, if they were criminals - and Bertie were smarter.… (more)