The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar by Maurice LeblancMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I was lukewarm about the Raffles books, the first two of which I read recently, but thought I would take a look at this French book from around the same time with a similar premise. I'm glad I did; it worked much better for me.
Rather than being narrated by a confederate like the Raffles books, this is in several different points of view; some are first-person as told by Lupin (though we don't necessarily get told that immediately), some in third person with him as a mysterious figure moving in the background and occasionally being spotted. He's a master of disguise with many aliases (of which Lupin is one, but it's how he's known to the public for his daring exploits); employs numerous confederates, most of whom don't get names or characterization but are just there to make it slightly more plausible that he can pull off his capers; and is able to commit daring crimes and (mostly) get away with them, because he's smarter than anyone else. Often, he manipulates people's expectations in order to lead them down a path of his choosing and away from catching him or foiling his crime. If he leaves a clue behind, it's because he chose to, and it will always be misleading.
We don't always learn right away (or sometimes at all) how he does the things he does, but we see enough of his cleverness to make the rest plausible enough for this kind of fiction. Because he's not a vicious or evil man, we're able to set aside his criminality and enjoy his exploits in the manner of a heist film. His victims are not specifically despicable in most cases, just wealthy, and he keeps the loot for himself, but he's seen by the public as almost a Robin Hood figure anyway.
It's competence porn, essentially, and it works. The author is clearly very clever also, to come up with these ideas, and if Lupin's success sometimes stretches plausibility, it only does so a little.
He does get arrested (in the first story), and imprisoned (in the second), and is even tried, but comeuppance is not really a thing he gets. Not even when he crosses swords with Sherlock Holmes, at the end of this collection of related short pieces. (The sequel, which I'm currently reading, transparently renames the detective as Herlock Sholmes, for purposes of parody and probably for legal reasons.)
It's a fun ride, and I'm glad to have found a series of older works that I enjoy enough to read more than one or two of them.
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