This is the first in a new blog series on crime fiction in translation, showcasing some of the best crime fiction (historical and modern) the non-English-speaking world has to offer. Each post will focus on a text or series from a different culture, so stay tuned to expand your crime fiction reading horizons. Contact ICFABlogs@gmail.com with recommendations for where/when the series should go next, or send us your own blog post about your country’s/country of research’s crime fiction.

In 2021, Lupin became the first French tv series to reach the top 10 streamed shows on Netflix in America, eventually nominated for both the International Emmy and Golden Globe Awards. Currently on its third season, and with a fourth on the way, Lupin is heavily inspired by a cornerstone of historical French crime fiction. His name is Arsène Lupin: France’s ‘national thief’ (Leblanc 7).

​ Arsène Lupin, created by journalist Maurice Leblanc, first appeared in the short story ‘The Arrest of Arsène Lupin’ (1905), and in over 18 subsequent novels and 3 short story collections. He quickly became one of the most successful gentleman burglars: a character archetype – revolving around the image of a well-dressed Robin Hood – that proliferated across the world’s crime fiction at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Popular gentleman burglars/thieves appeared at a similar time to Lupin in French, English, German, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, and American crime fiction, and as far afield as Argentina. A gentleman burglar plays a major role in what is arguably the first Malaysian detective novel (Roff 451). 

Lupin remained at the top of a saturated market not just through his rakish good looks and debonair charm – “nothing will show you more clearly what the Edwardian era meant by ‘style’ than an encounter with…Arsène Lupin” (Butler 21) – nor solely through his outrageous thefts, heists, scams, and schemes (in the novel The Hollow Needle [1909] he steals an entire building, piece by piece). Lupin secured his fanbase, and is still in print today, due to his quintessential ‘Frenchness’: his uncanny ability to encapsulate the latent attitudes of a nation. Emma Bielecki identifies a “concern with national identity [as] a salient feature of the Lupin sage as a whole” (53). She draws from Jean-Paul Sartre’s memoirs, specifically the philosopher’s childhood adoration of Lupin’s “herculean strength…courage and his very French intelligence” (Sartre 117), to highlight how “the Lupin texts…perform…a specific ideological role in consolidating a sense of French national identity” (Bielecki 54). 

Lupin’s ‘Frenchness’ naturally includes his style, wit, and ingenuity, but also his pronounced anti-authoritarianism, and his incessant need to thumb his nose at state institutions: “Certainly the appeal of [the Lupin stories] lies at least partially in their vaguely anarchist dimension, a general anti-authoritarian tendency, a contempt for any claims the State makes which place limitations on the individual” (Bielecki 50). A significant facet of Lupin’s ideological role is his impugning of police and judicial efficiency, reducing both institutions to the level of farcical pantomimes. In ‘The Escape of Arsène Lupin’ (1906) he fools the police into arresting his lookalike; in 813 (1910) he poses as the chief of the detective service for four years, ostensibly leading a manhunt against himself. 

Another side to Lupin’s ‘Frenchness’ is his not always amiable one-upmanship with that most legendary of English characters, Sherlock Holmes – emblematic of what Sita A. Schütt (2013) considers a long ‘tradition of political and cultural Anglo-French rivalry’ (59). Leblanc consistently pitched his master thief against the Great Detective, first with Lupin stealing an ageing Sherlock Holmes’s watch in ‘Sherlock Holmes Arrives Too Late’ (1906). Holmes’s author Arthur Conan Doyle made legal objections, leading to Leblanc conscientiously changing the title of the subsequent Lupin-Holmes showdown to Arsène Lupin vs. Herlock Sholmes (1907). This hints at the humour of the Lupin stories, which are as generous with the laughs as much as the mysteries and the thrills. 

So if you are looking for a joyous, rascally, stylish adventurer, the best of Belle Époque escapades and prewar flippancy, look no further than Arsène Lupin. Then have a think as to who the national thief or detective would be for other countries. Such figures often serve as a great entry point for new realms of crime fiction to enjoy.

Works Cited

Bielecki, Emma. “Arsène Lupin: Rewriting History.” Rewriting Wrongs: Crime Fiction and the Palimpsest, edited by Angela Kimyongur and Amy Wigelsworth, Cambridge Scholars, 2014, pp. 47–61.

Butler, William Vivian. The Durable Desperadoes: A Critical Study of Some Enduring Heroes. Macmillan, 1973.

Kay, George and François Uzan, creators. Lupin. Gaumont Television and Carrousel Studios, 2021.

Leblanc, Maurice. “The Arrest of Arsène Lupin.” Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief. 1906. Penguin, 2007, pp. 3–17.

---. Arsène Lupin vs. Herlock Sholmes. 1907. Wilco, 2021.

---. 813. 1910. Wilco, 2021.

---. “The Escape of Arsène Lupin.” Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief. 1906. Penguin, 2007, pp. 38–58.

---. The Hollow Needle. 1909. Wilco, 2021.

---. “Sherlock Holmes Arrives Too Late.” Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief. 1906. Penguin, 2007, pp. 92​​–116.

Roff, William R. “The Mystery of the First Malay Novel (And Who Was Rokambul?).” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde, vol. 130, no. 4, 1974, pp. 450–464. 

Sartre, Jean-Paul. The Words. Translated by Bernard Frechtman, George Braziller, 1964. 

Schütt, Sita A. “French Crime Fiction.” The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction, edited by Martin Priestman, CUP, 2013, pp. 59–76.

Tartaglione, Nancy. “Netflix’s ‘Lupin’ Becomes First French Series to Debut on Streamer’s U.S. Top Ten List.” Deadline, 11 Jan. 2021, https://deadline.com/2021/01/lupin-first-french-series-netflix-us-top-ten-list-omar-sy-1234670905/. Accessed 23 May 2025.