Description
In this, Gaboriau’s penultimate Lecoq novel, Lecoq doesn’t make an appearance until the last few chapters of the book. In fact, the protagonists’ identity remains unclear until almost halfway through. They’re not missed, though, because the antagonists are a group of blackmailers of exhaustive ingenuity and knowledge, and piecing together the game they’re playing with several noblemen and women occupies all of one’s faculties for most of the book.
Young love, old love, forbidden love, lost love, along with a couple of missing individuals: what is the blackmailers’ endgame? Will Lecoq be able to figure it out in time? Called “French sensational” in its day, Lecoq’s last case is still sensational today.
Description
A murder is discovered. The authorities quickly arrest an obvious suspect. A detective spends hours at the scene in disguise before making himself known, and proceeds to minutely examine the evidence with the assistance of a doctor, among others, before proclaiming the answer lies in a completely different direction. One would be forgiven for thinking the detective must be a certain famous Englishman and his doctor companion.
But this detective is French rather than English, a professional working for the police rather than an amateur, and indulges in candy lozenges rather than cocaine. If there is a straight line between Poe’s Dupin and Doyle’s Holmes, then Gaboriau’s Lecoq lies right in the middle of it. He is a master of disguise, he is proud and sometimes arrogant, he notices infinitesimal things others do not, he makes great leaps in deduction while others are struggling to take small steps. He is both strikingly similar and distinctly different than his more famous English “cousin.”
Although Monsieur Lecoq appeared in Gaboriau’s first novel, there he played only a minor part. Here, he is the main attraction. Solving the murder of a countess and disappearance of a count requires all of Lecoq’s skills, and as he steadily unravels the mystery one sees the debt that is owed by all who came after him.
Description
Considered by many to be the first detective novel, The Lerouge Case (aka The Widow Lerouge) introduces Monsieur Lecoq (later Inspector Lecoq), a former “habitual criminal” who becomes a police officer. Émile Gaboriau based Lecoq at least in part on an actual criminal-turned-police-officer, Eugène Vidocq, who went on to be the first director of the Sûreté. In this first book, Lecoq plays a relatively small part, the bulk of the mystery solving being done by Lecoq’s mentor Tabaret, an amateur detective.
Gaboriau thus introduces both a police detective and an amateur detective at the same time. Many of the attributes now taken for granted in the mystery arena originated with Gaboriau and Lecoq—hyper attention to detail, mastery of disguises, amateur “agents” who assist the detective, and the above-mentioned amateur detectives that assist and sometimes out-perform the police versions.
Gaboriau’s Lecoq novels were wildly successful until another amateur detective named Holmes made his appearance. Holmes even comments on Lecoq in A Study in Scarlet, dismissing him as a “miserable bungler” in response to Dr. Watson’s question. Nevertheless, Arthur Conan Doyle was obviously influenced by Gaboriau and Lecoq, as many of Holmes’ traits can be seen first in Lecoq.
Description
A bank safe is robbed. Only two men have both the key and the combination to the safe. The police naturally look to the employee rather than the owner of the bank. But Monsieur Lecoq, as always, sees what everyone else misses. Was it one of the two? Or was it a seemingly-impossible third party? Only Lecoq will be able to determine it. But why doesn’t he want his involvement in the case known?
Like Gaboriau’s two novels before it, File No. 113 is a mystery with a Dickensian tragedy behind it. Men and women of good character, of bad character, and good character who make bad choices abound, and remind us that the best mysteries have great personalities inhabiting them.
Description
The last Lecoq novel goes back to the beginning, to Monsieur Lecoq’s first case, the case that began his reputation as a master of detection, master of disguise, and master of detail. The case begins simply: Lecoq and several other policemen come upon a crime as it’s being committed. Three men are dead and the killer is in custody. But who is he? Lecoq and his companion officer spend months trying to figure it out, to no avail. Lecoq finally goes to visit his old mentor in order to gain some insight.
The scene then changes to some fifty years previous; in the aftermath of Waterloo, some noblemen return from exile. One of them insults the character of a local who has acted honorably on the nobleman’s behalf, and the remainder of the novel is devoted to how those few minutes end up unravelling the lives of everyone present, and many who aren’t.
Gaboriau again demonstrates his ability to mix detective mystery and Dickensian drama, and foreshadows the style of the first two novels of his more famous English cousin in detection.