Arsene Lupin, gentleman-cambrioleur
Maurice LeBlanc
Yes, a second book about the great French burglar, Arsene Lupin. This time though it was in the original French. I have not had so much fun reading a book in a long time. It took me several pages to get back into the way of reading French with any speed, and it was hard sometimes to pick it up and get going again, but as I read it, the transition become easier and easier and I also found myself learning more and more new French words. I learned French 30 years ago, but I do not have a very large vocabulary and increasing my vocabulary is always a nice treat. Though I do worry that I might be learning Victorian era words that are no longer in use in current French.
This volume is more of a collection of short stories, but the stories are related, at least most of them. We see Arsene on a ship, and being saved by a young lady, though saved is a relative term. He is arrested, but outsmarts the police to secure his release. He then returns to his usual sort of crimes, though we see his very first theft, and finally at the end, we see him solve a rather tricky problem to find a way in to commit a crime and then he recants his crime for the sake of the same lady that he met on the boat in the first story.
Now, this final problem, which involves finding a lost secret passageway also involves the famous English detective, Herlock Sholmes. Obviously, this is not much of an attempt to hide the identity of the detective he is borrowing from Arthur Conan Doyle, and LeBlanc does a pretty good job of presenting Sholmes in an accurate way. Not entirely accurate, but close enough for those with a casual acquaintance with the detective. Sholmes finds and opens the secret passage in just a few minutes, showing that he is not less smart than Arsene, and in fact he might have caught him, if Arsene had not gotten that one step ahead, by figuring out the secret before Sholmes even arrives.
Overall, it was a great read, and I can highly recommend it, if you read French. If not, then the English translation should be available.
