The Honor of the Name

Another lovely and complicated novel by Emile Gaboriau that connects to prior works and closes a previously abandoned story with intriguing potential for continuation. Emile Gaboriau was a pivotal character in detective fiction history. He was a French journalist and author who developed the "Roman police" with a logical series of books starring private investigator Monsieur Lecoq. Lecoq is based on the memoirs of a real-life thief-turned-cop named Francois Vidocq (1775-1857). Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes vanquished Gaboriau's huge cult. Interestingly, Holmes may be modeled on another of Gaboriau's characters, the detective Father Tabaret, whose tactics Monsieur Lecoq imitated in the first Lecoq book.