For a long time I had not read Arsene Lupin whose fan I was in my teens. And I end with this book all the fun I had at the time. First: an encouraging vitality. The novel begins on the Bleeding Edge. One policeman died. He announced two imminent dead that evening. The reader is immediately immersed in an emergency. Then: an amazing hero. While the puzzle begin to darken, Arsene Lupin (hidden under a false identity, but the reader does not recognize the difficulty: it is always one who is beautiful, elegant, intelligent, tanned, etc.), which arrives only, and is not aware of anything in a jiffy, makes clear. Example: The Commissioner of Police does not understand anything, not the player, the situation is sinking and the only suspect is Lupin. It has no other choice but to find him guilty, if he will not be stopped. But we do not expect a long and careful investigation and a hundred pages to understand the word end of the story. No, Lupin returns the situation brilliantly thanks to its single observation. And this happens at least five times in the novel. That's what's fun in the novels of Maurice Leblanc: it goes fast and it is a succession of feats. All in a writing when mastered even the authors of American crime fiction today. Even though we may regret some rhetorical red tape in the explanations. Finally, we too want anddiscover, the author sometimes ends up inventing a bit farfetched tricks. But OK! The pleasure of reading is there.
