Review: 813

813 by Maurice Leblanc
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lupin robs a man and ties him, and his associates in another room, up in order to make his escape. Next morning, the man is found murdered, with Lupin's card attached to his clothing.

Lupin takes a lot of pride in not killing (though he skates close to or even over this edge at times in his adventures), so he sets out to discover the actual murderer. Cue a roller-coaster of suspense with a dark, dangerous antagonist who stays ahead of Lupin almost the entire time. Lupin, while still highly competent, has a lot of setbacks and outright failures to contend with here. Also, like his British equivalent Raffles, he turns out to be highly patriotic when he has to deal with the German Kaiser.

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