Maurice Leblanc was an unnoticed jobbing writer until a magazine asked him for a crime story in 1905 - and France promptly took the gentleman burglar Arsene Lupin to its heart, preferring him cheerfully to Sherlock Holmes. Lupin announces his thefts in advance, is arrested, escapes, runs his next caper from a prison cell, and matches wits with a certain English detective whose name the lawyers insisted be changed. This edition presents the complete and unabridged translation, newly typeset and illustrated with 39 full-page color plates of the era, Beraud's Paris among them.
