The Count’s Millions

Book excerpt: Émile Gaboriau (November 9, 1832 - September 28, 1873) was a French writer, novelist, journalist, and a pioneer of detective fiction. His first detective novel, Monsieur Lecoq 1869, which featured an amateur detective and a young police officer (Monsieur Lecoq), was a success and the Lecoq was the hero in Gaboriau's 3 later detective novels. The character of Lecoq was based on a real-life thief turned police officer, Eugène François Vidocq (1775-1857), whose own memoirs, Les Vrais Mémoires de Vidocq, mixed fiction and fact. It may also have been influenced by the villainous Monsieur Lecoq, one of the main protagonists of Féval's Les Habits Noirs book series. Gaboriau was a pioneer and a great success in his time until Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes which diverted global attention from his Monsieur Lecoq. The story was produced on the stage in 1872. A long series of novels dealing with the annals of the police court followed, and proved very popular. Gaboriau died in Paris of pulmonary apoplexy.