Lupin announces a theft, is arrested, escapes, and conducts his next case from a cell — and then a certain English detective arrives and has his name changed by the lawyers. Leblanc was an unnoticed jobbing writer until a magazine asked him for a crime story in 1905; France took the gentleman burglar to heart and preferred him, cheerfully, to Sherlock Holmes. Fifty-nine plates, from Jean Béraud's Paris boulevards to Paul Signac's harbour light, supply the Belle Époque backdrop this gentleman burglar moves through.
Lupin announces a theft, is arrested, escapes, and conducts his next case from a cell — and then a certain English detective arrives and has his name changed by the lawyers. Leblanc was an unnoticed jobbing writer until a magazine asked him for a crime story in 1905; France took the gentleman bur...