Arsène Lupin est de retour pour la plus grandiose, mais aussi la plus sombre de ses aventures. Le diamantaire Kesselbach est assassiné dans sa chambre d'hôtel, bientôt suivi de deux autres victimes. Les indices tendent à incriminer Lupin ; mais, on le sait, Lupin ne tue jamais... n'est-ce pas ? Tout au long de cette intrigue haletante, il se démènera pour percer le secret de Kesselbach, qui repose sur deux formules mystérieuses : ' APOON ' et ' 813 '. Les déchiffrer pourrait bien lui servir l'Europe sur un plateau... Fini les cambriolages destinés à enrichir ses collections : héros aux multiples visages, il joue désormais dans la cour des grands de ce monde. Manipulant son entourage sans aucun scrupule, il ira partout où l'entraînera sa folie des grandeurs, sans toutefois semer l'ignoble meurtrier, qui met à mal, pour la première fois, son assurance légendaire.
Dans ce roman paru en 1910, Leblanc brosse un portrait nuancé du gentleman-cambrioleur, charmeur toujours au bord du précipice. Il signe avec 813 un grand classique de la littérature policière.
Avec dix gravures d'époque.
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Dans ce roman paru en 1910, Leblanc brosse un portrait nuancé du gentleman-cambrioleur, charmeur toujours au bord du précipice. Il signe avec 813 un grand classique de la littérature policière.
Avec dix gravures d'époque.
Maurice Leblanc
Maurice Marie Émile Leblanc (; French: ; 11 December 1864 – 6 November 1941) was a French novelist and writer of short stories, known primarily as the creator of the fictional gentleman thief and detective Arsène Lupin, often described as a French counterpart to Arthur Conan Doyle's creation Sherlock Holmes.
The first Arsène Lupin story appeared in a series of short stories that was serialized in the magazine Je sais tout, starting in No. 6, dated 15 July 1905. Clearly created at editorial request, it is possible that Leblanc had also read Octave Mirbeau's Les 21 jours d'un neurasthénique (1901), which features a gentleman thief named Arthur Lebeau, and he had seen Mirbeau's comedy Scrupules (1902), whose main character is a gentleman thief.
By 1907, Leblanc had graduated to writing full-length Lupin novels, and the reviews and sales were so good that Leblanc effectively dedicated the rest of his career to working on the Lupin stories. Like Conan Doyle, who often appeared embarrassed or hindered by the success of Sherlock Holmes and seemed to regard his success in the field of crime fiction as a detraction from his more "respectable" literary ambitions, Leblanc also appeared to have resented Lupin's success. Several times he tried to create other characters, such as private eye Jim Barnett, but he eventually merged them with Lupin. He continued to pen Lupin tales well into the 1930s.
Leblanc also wrote two notable science fiction novels: Les Trois Yeux (1919), in which a scientist makes televisual contact with three-eyed Venusians, and Le Formidable Evènement (1920), in which an earthquake creates a new landmass between England and France.
Leblanc was awarded the Légion d'Honneur for his services to literature, and died in Perpignan in 1941. He was buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery. Georgette Leblanc was his sister.
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