Crime Stories | A Gentleman – Not a Thief

He's the French pulp pop star: Master thief Arsène Lupin comes from the cheap pulp magazines; he's a distinguished serial character inspired by the master detective Sherlock Holmes. Only Lupin is on the other side of morality.

The successful British "Strand Magazine," in which Arthur Conan Doyle published the Holmes stories at the end of the 19th century, served as inspiration for the invention of France's most successful super-crook. Commissioned by the popular science journal "Je sais tout" to write a story in the style of that magazine, the writer Maurice Leblanc delivered the first short story about the master thief in July 1905: "The Arrest of Arsène Lupin." The name of his hero quickly became a political issue itself, as it was a clear reference to a hated Parisian city councilor named Arsène Lopin. Lupin, however, has kept his name since the first appearance in the story of his arrest.

In this story, he steals various valuables on a passenger ship en route from France to America, terrorizing the passengers. He escapes his opponent, Inspector Justin Ganimard, several times in various disguises, which later become his trademark – along with his gentlemanly courtesy. At the end, he is arrested, but it remains unclear whether the arrested person is actually the wanted Arsène Lupin or not. A true cliffhanger.

The success of this short story led to a further 39 short stories, 18 novels, and five plays centered around this ever-polite dandy, which continue to enjoy great popularity in French culture to this day. He lives on in countless novels, children's books, theater performances, film adaptations, as well as comics and manga. His character has established a unique genre within French crime fiction: stories of gentleman thieves. Most recently, the French Netflix series "Lupin" referenced him without reviving the historical Lupin himself. A kind of reincarnation of Lupin can also be found in the popular German radio play series "Die ???" (The ???), as a supporting character named Victor Hugenay, a clever art thief who always evades the police.

Lupin creator Maurice Leblanc came from the northern French middle class. Born in 1864 in Rouen, the son of a shipowner, he made no secret of his sympathies for the anarchist movement at the beginning of his literary career. It was the heyday of illegalism, and the "expropriation of the expropriators," the expropriation or stealing from the rich and exploiters, was considered an appropriate form of action. A well-known representative of this movement, Alexandre Marius Jacob, the "Worker of the Night," was put on trial in Amiens in 1905. For a long time, it was considered a given in the reception of Lupin that Leblanc was inspired by the master thief, a claim he vehemently denied during his lifetime and a claim that has since been refuted by more recent scholarship. In contrast to the classic anarchist expropriators, who always donated a portion of their loot to the families of prisoners or to movement projects, Arsène Lupin hoarded his stolen goods in the chalk cliffs of Étretat on the Normandy coast. He even allegedly owned the legendary treasure of the French kings. The 1909 story "The Hollow Needle" tells of this story – and continues to fire the imagination of many treasure hunters to this day.

The popular tourist destination of Étretat, especially in the summer, benefits particularly from this history. Leblanc also lived there in a villa that now houses an Arsène Lupin Museum. Thanks to a kind of Pokemon Go version of the game, fans can also follow in the footsteps of the master thief through the town center. In Étretat, by contrast, the church where the future Nobel Prize winner André Gide and his wife were married, and the house of the French novelist Guy de Maupassant, have lost some of their significance; they even seem irrelevant.

The stories of Arsène Lupin thrive on a few recurring stylistic elements. A sympathetic and educated anti-hero enters into a battle with an upper class often portrayed as decadent, full of humor. He uses a variety of disguises to approach his victims and engage in a game of cat and mouse with the police. These tales, which are more reminiscent of adventure stories than classic detective stories, are interwoven with both a touch of mysticism and a pinch of romance. There is also plenty of Norman local color. Unlike other famous heroes of French crime fiction, who operate in sophisticated Paris—be it Fantômas, whose headquarters are in Montmartre, or Nestor Burma's Fiat Lux agency in the 10th arrondissement—the Lupin stories usually take place in the triangle surrounding Étretat, Le Havre, and Rouen.

The upper class is being robbed, and the police are overzealous but clueless. The motto is: "You can't arrest an Arsène Lupin." He has proven this repeatedly in countless novels, children's books, theater productions, film adaptations, comics, and manga, in which he consistently evades both the police and a British master detective named Herlock Sholmes.