The second was an entire volume of feeble parodies in which Lupin bests a straw man who little resembles Conan Doyle’s detective. For some reason, Alexander Teixeira de Mattos twisted the name further, into Holmlock Shears, but the present edition presumes to restore Sherlock Holmes’s real name, which Leblanc was going to use until Conan Doyle’s attorneys squawked loudly enough to be heard across the channel.

Leblanc had also already published his two best novels, The Hollow Needle in 1909 and 8x3 in 1910, although he would go on to write several more. The Lupin of these longer outings rises to an even more outrageous, almost mythic, level. The Hollow Needle, a roller-coaster of deception on several levels, reads like a hybrid of the last Captain Nemo adventure and the first James Bond, and 813 blends the Knights Templar and international intrigue a century ahead of The Da Vinci Code. A new novel, The Crystal Stopper, was in press, and 1912 would also see publication of the third collection, The Confessions of Arsène Lupin.

“His novels and short tales are more than clever,” says Meltzer of Leblanc, and bestows the maladroit tribute, “They have the merit of being almost literature.” It was Meltzer who penned the quotable blurb about Arsène Lupin: “… a scoundrel who, to the skill of Sherlock Holmes and the resourcefulness of Raffles, adds the refinement of a casuist, the epigrammatical nim-bleness of a La Rouchefoucauld, and the gallantry of a Du Guesclin.” The latter (less well known off his native soil) was a fourteenth-century adventurer with a wildly varied and risky life.

The Chateau de Tancarville dates back to the tenth century. Founded by a favorite of William the Conqueror—whose mother’s grave is nearby—it has been destroyed and rebuilt several times over the centuries. Now its crumbled ramparts arched over grass and were clothed with ivy. Meltzer arrived in heavy rain. Ahead, at the end of a shaded avenue, Leblanc was waiting for him against the ruins. Expecting a crime-savvy cynic, Meltzer found instead a sedate and gracious host with “kindly eyes.” A frequent smile peeked out from under a valance of unruly mustache darker than his sparse gray hair.

When asked how he knew so much about criminology, Leblanc laughed and exclaimed, “But I am blankly ignorant! I never met or talked with thieves and rogues. They do not interest me. I never had the faintest wish to know them. My stories are pure romance—the fictions of my brain—the merest fancies.”

Meltzer asked if he had ever studied criminology at all, and Leblanc replied that he had read Edgar Allan Poe and studied Balzac. “All the romance of crime was suggested in Poe’s works. I don’t remember anything besides Poe and Balzac that could have helped me work out my plots—unless my fondness for the game of chess was useful. Chess helps one to make plays. And why not novels?”

Leblanc neglected to mention France’s pioneer detective story writer Emile Gaboriau, who in 1868 had based his insightful Monsieur Lecoq on the real life of thief-turned-policeman Francois Eugene Vidocq, who rose from guttersnipe to founder of the Surete. But Gaboriau’s painstaking detective work and restoration of order were not for Leblanc—and much of Gaboriau’s style was also inspired by Poe and Balzac. In his famous survey of the crime genre, Murder for Pleasure, the mystery critic Howard Haycraft described a crucial distinction: “Leblanc is perhaps not quite the equal of Gaboriau… in the realm of pure ratiocination, but he is an infinitely more resourceful and convincing storyteller, a finer master of plot and situation….” Some critics suggest that another inspiration was Rocambole, the cavalier rogue in Ponson de Terrail’s series of novels The Dramas of Paris.

After a genial discussion of the character and the series, “I have to charge you with a grave offense,” said Meltzer. “Do you not think you have done some harm by making a hero of a man like Arsène Lupin?”

“No, I think my conscience is at least as nice as most.” Leblanc did Meltzer the courtesy of not smiling. “And if I thought that I had harmed my fellows— But I do not.” Leblanc admitted that at one time he worried about this issue himself, that for awhile he didn’t want his son Claude to read his books. “Since then, however,” said the creator of the thief who picked the pocket of Sherlock Holmes, “I have changed my mind.”

Suggestions for Further Reading

SELECTED BOOKS BY MAURICE LEBLANC

Publication dates given are for first French editions, although titles have been translated into English. English and American editions usually appeared the next year.

A Woman (1887)

Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar (1907), published in English variously as The Exploits of Arsène Lupin, The Seven of Hearts, and other titles

Arsène Lupin versus Herlock Sholmes (1908)

The Hollow Needle (1908)

813 (1910)

The Frontier (1912)

The Confessions of Arsène Lupin (1912)

The Crystal Stopper (1913)

The Teeth of the Tiger (1915)

The Woman of Mystery (1916)

The Eight Strokes of the Clock (1922)

The Secret Tomb (1923)

The Tremendous Event (1924)

Arsène Lupin Intervenes (1928)

Wanton Venus (1934)

OTHER WORKS

(Including Those Referred to or Useful in the Introduction)

William Vivian Butler, The Durable Desperadoes: A Critical Study of Some Enduring Heroes (London: Macmillan, 1973)

Frank Wadleigh Chandler, The Literature of Roguery (New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1907)

Howard Haycraft, Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story (revised edition, New York: Carroll & Graf, 1984).

Charles Henry Meltzer, “Arsène Lupin at Home,” Cosmopolitan, v. 54 n. 6 (May, 1913), reprinted in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, v. 49. Most of the Leblanc quotations are taken from Meltzer’s article.

Ellery Queen, 101 Years Entertainment: The Great Detective Stories 1841—1941 (New York: Modern Library, 1941).

Agnes Reppelier, “A Short Defense of Villains,” in Essays in Miniature (New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1895).

Edward Thorpe, The Seine from Havre to Paris (London: Macmillan, 1913).

THE ARREST OF ARSÈNE LUPIN

The strangest of journeys! And yet it had begun so well! I, for my part, had never made a voyage that started under better auspices. The Provence is a swift and comfortable transatlantic liner, commanded by the most genial of men. The company gathered on board was of a very select character. Acquaintances were formed and amusements organized.