A Prince of Swindlers

A collection of Victorian era sensational crime stories. Boothby's gentleman rogue - a burglar and second story man - was a member of the upper crust, similar to Hornung's Raffles character, but actually created prior to Raffles. This collection includes eight episodes of Simon Carne adventures.

Guy Boothby was also the author of The Kidnapped President, Doctor Nikola, and In the Power of the Sultan.

"A breath-taking crook story that will satisfy any reader's appetite for thrills. One smart, fearless, and clever scoundrel keeps an entire city in terror. This is one of the best works of a great mystery story writer."

"After no small amount of deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that it is only fit and proper I should set myself right with the world in the matter of the now famous 18-swindles. For, though I have never been openly accused of complicity in those miserable affairs, yet I cannot rid myself of the remembrance that it was I who introduced the man who perpetrated them to London society, and that in more than one instance I acted, innocently enough, Heaven knows, as his Deus ex machina, in bringing about the very results he was so anxious to achieve. I will first allude, in a few words, to the year in which the crimes took place, and then proceed to describe the events that led to my receiving the confession which has so strangely and unexpectedly come into my hands."