wahistorian 's review for:

Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief by Lorenzo Garza, Maurice Leblanc

3.0

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This book compiles the best gentleman-thief Arsene Lupin stories from Maurice Leblanc’s five Lupin short story collections, published between 1906 and 1922. Leblanc professed to love Poe and Conan Doyle, but chose to focus on the exploits of shape-shifting thief Lupin—at first. The appeal of the detective novel was irresistible, however, and the fact that Lupin (or Renine or Velmont or Barnett, his alter-egos) begins solving crimes later in his career rather than committing them suggests that the Lupin formula wasn’t quite right. These stories are a little dated, sure, but the fact that Lupin never really gels as a character is the bigger problem. It may be why Leblanc continually changed viewpoints and names and modus operandi; he was looking for a character he really wanted to spend time with. Never mind; the Arsene Lupin stories remains a fascinating experiment in genre fiction, and worth a read.