What to read after “The Amateur Cracksman” by E. W. Hornung: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.
Arsène Lupin robs the rich with flawless manners and a wink, slipping past locked doors and out of police traps alike. A master of disguise who lives both as an elegant gentleman and as France's most wanted burglar, he steals jewels, paintings and secrets, and often turns his schemes against people who deserve it. The stories follow his ingenious thefts and the detectives who try to catch him.
Simon Templar, known as the Saint, lives by his own rules and targets men who have grown rich on crime. Charming and unbothered by the law, he arranges clever robberies and swindles that turn the tables on villains, sometimes leaving the money with their victims. Three adventures follow his schemes, his quick disguises and the police who would like to see him behind bars.
In 1855 a polished thief plans to steal a shipment of gold being carried by train from London toward the Crimea. He gathers a crew, copies the four keys to the safes and studies the timetable, while a police informant threatens to expose the scheme.
In late-Victorian London, a shopkeeper who is also a paid spy for a foreign power is ordered to carry out a bombing. The people around him, including his wife and her vulnerable brother, are pulled into the consequences of a plot he cannot control.
Sherlock Holmes is asked to guard a London art dealer who is being followed, and the case opens onto two mysteries: a gang known as the House of Silk, and a crime so dangerous that Watson can only set it down years later, in a final untold adventure.
In the city of Vienne, the aristocrat Nicholas Valiarde plays the careless nobleman while secretly running a network of thieves. He is funding a long revenge against the man who ruined his family through a series of elegant heists. Then eerie deaths and a forbidden necromantic power interrupt his carefully built scheme, and Nicholas has to decide how far his deception and his private code will carry him.
A respected London doctor is oddly close to a violent, mysterious man named Hyde. When a friend investigates the link between them, he uncovers a scientific experiment that set loose a darker self.
Twelve stories follow London's most observant detective and his friend Dr Watson as they untangle impossible crimes, strange clients and quiet suburban mysteries from their rooms on Baker Street.
Too clever for Victorian society and blamed when three people die, Charlotte Holmes flees to London and takes the name Sherlock Holmes. With a kind widow, a police inspector and a man who loves her, she works the case while hiding who she really is.
In a city of canals and thieves, Locke Lamora leads a small band of con artists who rob the nobility. A hidden power turns the tables, and the crew find themselves caught in a scheme far larger than any of their own.
Cylinders fall from Mars onto the English countryside, and the machines inside prove ruthlessly hostile. A student watches the invasion spread toward London as orderly Victorian society collapses around him.
A beautiful young man surrenders to his vanity when his portrait begins to age and wither in place of his body. Sheltered by a cynical friend, Dorian chases pleasure without consequence until the hidden painting becomes a record of his cruelty.
Katarina Bishop has left her family's life of theft for a boarding school, but her father is accused of stealing five paintings from a dangerous collector. To save him, Kat assembles a crew of young thieves and plans a museum heist against a two-week deadline, with Interpol and a mobster close behind.
On Christmas Eve, the miser Ebenezer Scrooge dismisses charity and human warmth. That night the ghost of his dead partner arrives, followed by three spirits who show him his past, the suffering around him and the future his choices will bring. Given one night to see himself clearly, Scrooge must decide whether to change.
A strange, insect-like creature arrives in London bent on revenge against a member of Parliament, and its powers reach into the lives of everyone near him. The story is told through several witnesses who each encounter the being and try to stop it.
Walking home one night, Walter Hartright meets a terrified woman dressed all in white. Her story draws him into the household of Limmeridge and a conspiracy of forged identities, hidden marriages and a locked asylum, as he tries to uncover what happened to her.
Betrayed on the eve of his wedding and imprisoned for years, Edmond Dantès escapes with a fortune and returns under a new name. Patiently, he engineers the ruin of the men who stole his life.
An orphan raised in a workhouse runs away to London, where the thief Fagin takes him into a band of child pickpockets. Kind strangers try to rescue him while the criminals want him back for their own plans. The novel follows his search for a home and the mystery of his birth.
Two orphaned brothers run away to Venice and fall in with a gang of street children led by the mysterious Thief Lord, who claims to be a master burglar. The children live in an abandoned cinema, stealing what they need and looking out for one another, until a strange commission and a magical carousel pull them into a bigger adventure than they expected.
Bernie Rhodenbarr is a polite, skilled burglar who never hurts anyone and only steals from people who can afford it. Hired to steal a small blue box from a Manhattan apartment, he is still there when the police arrive and a dead body is found in the bedroom. To clear his name he has to work out how the murder was done.
A priceless yellow diamond looted from an Indian temple is left to Rachel Verinder on her birthday, and vanishes the same night. Family, servants, doctors and a famous detective each tell their part of the story as suspicion moves from one person to another.
Robin Hood takes to Sherwood Forest as an outlaw after a clash with the law, and gathers a band of loyal companions around him. They rob the rich and the corrupt, help the poor, and match wits with the Sheriff of Nottingham. The tales follow their feasts, disguises, archery contests and fights against unjust rulers.
Michael Smith has not spoken since a violent event in his childhood. As a teenager he discovers he can open almost any lock, a talent that draws criminals who need a safecracker. His skill also brings him to Amelia, and protecting her pulls him into an elaborate con he cannot easily escape.
Slippery Jim diGriz is the galaxy's smoothest con man and thief, a well-mannered crook who talks his way through bank vaults and police cordons. Caught at last, he is offered a choice: work for the secret service he spent years outwitting, or face prison. His first assignment sends him after another criminal just as clever as himself, across worlds and space stations where every plan needs a quick rethink.
Start with “Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief”, “Enter the Saint”, “The Great Train Robbery”: they are the closest to “The Amateur Cracksman” in tropes and mood. Under each book in the list you will see what exactly it has in common.
How are similar books chosen?
We compare tropes (for “The Amateur Cracksman” these are Gentleman Thief, Heist, Dual Identity), genre, plot, era and tone. It is not “readers also bought”; it is similarity in the content itself.
Are there recent books in this list?
Yes. Among the newer ones are “The House of Silk”, “A Study in Scarlet Women”, “The Lies of Locke Lamora”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
