As already mentioned by other Avians, it's obviously Ars讥
Lupin -thief and PI- by Maurice Leblanc (1864-19410) that
your correspondent is looking for. The original French
version of the novels and short stories are constantly
reprinted and will not be difficult to find IMO (total:
approx. 20 volumes). The character of Ars讥 Lupin, "le
gentleman cambrioleur" (the gentleman burglar), is one of the
most famous creations of French classic detection mysteries,
and is rather different in spirit from the Sherlock Holmes
stories. Lupin is fundamentally anti-establishment, socially
ironic… Leblanc's mystery stories with Lupin are founding
works of the French mainstream mystery novels and they twill
heavily influence an important part of this lit in
France.
The first adventure of Lupin was published in 1905. It was an
instant hit, and the publisher convinced Leblanc to create a
series of short stories with the same character, as Leblanc
never triggered such a success with his mainstream production
of literary novels. Due to the huge readership of SH in
Europe at the time, it was inevitable that readers made
comparisons between the two sagas… and Leblanc staged
confrontations between SH and AL in some stories: The most
famous one is :
"Ars讥 Lupin contre Herlock Sholmes" - ('AL vs. HS')- SH's
name is intentionally misspelled because of copyright
problems for using the original spelling.
Amongst the best Lupin novels:
-L'aiguille creuse (= the hollow needle)
-813
-L' aux 30 cercueils (= the island with 30 coffins), his
most atypical and somber novel
But the whole thing is miles away from H/B or noir.
E.Borgers Hard-Boiled Mysteries http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6384
At 12:24 23-04-03 EDT,
Mbdlevin@aol.com wrote:
>
>
> I'm on another list where the following query was
posted. Does anyone know
> the answer (maybe Etienne Borgers)? Doesn't sound
hard-boiled, but sounds
> like an interesting piece of the crime fiction
history puzzle. (the now
> generally silent) Doug
>
>I am trying to identify the title and author of some
books originally
written
>in French.
>
>Growing up in Taiwan I read a series of detective
books in Chinese. They
>featured a very clever detective/crook who stole
money from the rich and
gave
>the money to the poor. He constantly outwitted
Sherlock Holmes, who looked
>like an idiot in these books. (do we detect any
British-French rivalries
>here?) The stories are set in France, often Paris, my
guess is during the
>1800s. The name of the detective/crook in Chinese is
ya-sen, lo-bin. Robin
>is probably his first name. The French author is
Morris something
>(Mo-li-shi, lu-bu-liang.)
>
>I would like to locate versions of these books in
English or French. My
>friend mentioned a website at U Chicago where people
can ask questions like
>this. If any of you literary wizards on this list
knows what I'm talking
>about, or a website where I can ask, I'd really
appreciate it.
>
>By the way, I am trying to order books in Chinese. If
you know a good source
>for that, that would be great.
>--
>
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