regshoe

This was a good one to enjoy over a sunny Easter weekend!

Stingaree (1905) is a collection of interrelated short stories, similar in structure to the first three Raffles books and chronicling the adventures of the bushranger Stingaree, a well-mannered British gentleman who for reasons that are never more than hinted at has taken to a life of crime in the depths of Australia. The character first appeared nine years earlier in Irralie's Bushranger, but Hornung clearly felt there was more to be done with him...

Unlike the Raffles books, these stories are written in the third person and mostly from outside POVs, which gives them a very different, and somewhat more sinister, mood. Stingaree has a companion, the rather thuggish Howie, but he more than Bunny Manders is an accomplice rather than a partner in crime, and instead of getting his perspective or Stingaree's own we see the bushranger as he appears to a succession of random Australians whom he robs, threatens, captures, charms and, generally, outwits. Hornung makes a great deal of Stingaree's talent for disguises, and after a while the stories turned into a bit of a game of guessing which character was going to turn out to be Stingaree all along this time, but I found this charmingly fun rather than annoying—it's that kind of story.

The other thing that makes these stories darker than the Raffles stories is Stingaree's character. He is a gentleman and has something of a gentleman's standards—he makes a point of never shooting to kill, and enjoys giving his opponents a sporting chance—but he is certainly a little less scrupulous than Raffles, and the perspectives of his enemies serve to highlight this. But Stingaree has his romantic side as well: like Raffles he has a keen aesthetic sense, with his love for music (one of the possessions he keeps with him in the bush is a music-box that plays Gilbert and Sullivan). And the other characters, or at least some of them, don't fail to appreciate this. We first see Stingaree through the eyes of Hilda Bouverie, a young woman with a fine singing voice, as the bushranger in an unusual style helps her get her start as a professional singer, and she never forgets him or what he did for her. And one of the later stories features a young man who, knowing Stingaree only by reputation, adores him and takes him as a role model, with disastrous consequences (Hornung's comment on fandom???).

The stories also seemed less meditative than the Raffles stories, and Hornung's various other more 'serious' books about crime and criminals. There's none of the philosophising on the nature of crime that there is in The Rogue's March, for instance. But there are a few intriguing hints as to how Stingaree sees his own position in life and the choices that have brought him to it. I can almost see him as a 'there but for the grace of God...' slightly darker AU version of Raffles, and there's certainly a lot of fic potential in his backstory and present-day attitudes.

Hornung is once again very happy to be describing the Australia that he clearly knew so well. The portrayal here is as vivid as it's always been, but without the tinge of wistful nostalgia that many of his other Australian books have to them. Instead it's simply the perfect setting for a set of very appropriately stirring adventure stories, which on the whole I enjoyed very much.