The only one of E.W. Hornung’s Raffles books I hadn’t read decades ago was Mr. Justice Raffles. I just read it, and it certainly lets this reader see the previous books in a new light; in his obsessive, codependent relationship with a disturbed and much younger man, it seems obvious that Raffles is as gay as a maypole.

(Not that there’s anything wrong with that…)

Maybe his longterm sidekick, Bunny Manders, was getting too old.

This book really is a trip, though. It’s...