The Blonde Lady

"The Blonde Lady" sees Arsène Lupin (the gentleman-burglar) once again meeting his enemy, the English detective Herlock Sholmes. These two great intellects are bound in opposite directions, where one chooses to abide to the law and the other uses his power and wits to crime. This early work by Maurice Leblanc was originally published in 1908 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. Maurice Marie Émile Leblanc was born on 11th November 1864 in Rouen, Normandy, France. He was a novelist and writer of short stories, known primarily as the creator of the fictional gentleman thief and detective, Arsène Lupin. Leblanc spent his early education at the Lycée Pierre Corneille (in Rouen), and after studying in several countries and dropping out of law school, he settled in Paris and began to write fiction. From the start, Leblanc wrote both short crime stories and longer novels - and his lengthier tomes, heavily influenced by writers such as Flaubert and Maupassant, were critically admired, but met with little commercial success. Leblanc was largely considered little more than a writer of short stories for various French periodicals when the first Arsène Lupin story appeared. It was published as a series of stories in the magazine 'Je Sais Trout', starting on 15th July, 1905. Clearly created at editorial request under the influence of, and in reaction to, the wildly successful Sherlock Holmes stories, the roguish and glamorous Lupin was a surprise success and Leblanc's fame and fortune beckoned. In total, Leblanc went on to write twenty-one Lupin novels or collections of short stories. On this success, he later moved to a beautiful country-side retreat in Étreat (in the Haute-Normandie region in north-western France), which today is a museum dedicated to the Arsène Lupin books. Leblanc was awarded the Légion d'Honneur - the highest decoration in France - for his services to literature. He died in Perpignan (the capital of the Pyrénées-Orientales department in southern France) on 6th November 1941, at the age of seventy-six. He is buried in the prestigious Montparnasse Cemetery of Paris.

THE BLONDE LADY BY MAURICE LEBLANC What a din along the boulevards on the day when the newsboys shouted: "Arrest of Arsène Lupin!" My excuse for duplicating reports that we all heard from the newsboys is that I can supply something new: I can furnish the key to the puzzle. There is always a certain mystery about these adventures: I can dispel it. I reprint articles that have been read over and over again; I copy out old interviews: but all these things I rearrange and classify and put to the exact test of truth. My collaborator in this work is Arsène Lupin himself, whose kindness to me is inexhaustible. I am also under an occasional obligation to the unspeakable Wilson, the friend and confidant of Holmlock Shears. (For this is the adventure where Arsène Lupin and Holmlock Shears came face to face. And a thrilling adventure it is.) THE BLONDE LADY BY MAURICE LEBLANC Maurice Marie Émile Leblanc (11 November 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 BLONDE LADY BY MAURICE LEBLANC Leblanc was born in Rouen, Normandy, where he was educated at the Lycée Pierre Corneille.After studying in several countries and dropping out of law school, he settled in Paris and began to write fiction, both short crime stories and longer novels; his novels, heavily influenced by writers like Gustave Flaubert and Guy de Maupassant, were critically admired but met with little commercial success. THE BLONDE LADY BY MAURICE LEBLANC Leblanc was largely considered little more than a writer of short stories for various French periodicals when the first Arsène Lupin story appeared in a series of short stories serialized in the magazine Je Sais Tout, starting in No. 6, dated 15 July 1905. Clearly created at editorial request under the influence of, and in reaction to, the wildly successful Sherlock Holmes stories, the roguish and glamorous Lupin was a surprise success and Leblanc's fame and fortune beckoned. In total, Leblanc went on to write twenty-one Lupin novels or collections of short stories. THE BLONDE LADY BY MAURICE LEBLANC The character of Lupin might have been based by Leblanc on French anarchist Marius Jacob, whose trial made headlines in March 1905; it is also 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 seen Mirbeau's comedy Scrupules (1902), whose main character is a gentleman thief. It was not influenced by E. W. Hornung's gentleman thief, A.J. Raffles, created in 1899, whom Leblanc had not read. THE BLONDE LADY BY MAURICE LEBLANC 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 eventually merged them with Lupin. He continued to pen Lupin tales well into the 1930s. THE BLONDE LADY BY MAURICE LEBLANC 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. THE BLONDE LADY BY MAURICE LEBLANC

The Blonde Lady is novel by by Maurice Leblanc and published in 1910.

INDEX CHAPTER I NUMBER 514, SERIES 23 CHAPTER II THE BLUE DIAMOND CHAPTER III HOLMLOCK SHEARS OPENS HOSTILITIES CHAPTER IV A GLIMMER IN THE DARKNESS CHAPTER V KIDNAPPED CHAPTER VI THE SECOND ARREST OF ARSÈNE LUPIN SECOND EPISODE THE JEWISH LAMP CHAPTER I CHAPTER II

The Blonde Lady: Large Print by Maurice LeBlanc A battle of wits between master criminal Arsène Lupin, and the English detective "Holmlock Shears."