The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar

I am a big fan of the Arsene Lupin stories. I listened to this as an audiobook narrated by BJ Harrison. This book is a collection of stories which introduce the intrepid burglar. There is a lot of exposition in these stories as the characters are being introduced. Some of this is handled well by the author, but some of it is awkward. The narrator does his best to ease you through the awkward moments. In fact, I believe this narrator elevates the story and improves it immensely from what you might perceive if you were reading a printed version.  The pacing of the narration is excellent and each character speaks in a distinctive voice that brings them alive.

The first four stories could actually stand together as a novella, and they are worth the price of the entire book. We meet Lupin without knowing who he is, then he is arrested, imprisoned, and escapes. We meet his nemesis, Detective Ganimard, who will play a bigger role in future stories.

In the final story, Lupin meets Sherlock Holmes, setting up the conflict which will occur in the next book in the series.

I thoroughly enjoyed this audiobook and highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys classic detective stories in the vein of Sherlock Holmes.

It's a collection of eight loosely interconnected stories portraying the French debonair thief Arsène Lupin. The characters seemed to be so enamored by him that one of them even claims he is their national thief. The stories keeps a playfulness and kind of, portrays everything of that time, in a satirical note- that of the decay of French nobility and the greediness of the poor, the folly of the police members and the appetite for sensational stories by the public.

Although our antihero tries very hard to mirror his contemporary genius from the other side of the Channel (who incidentally appears in the last story, only to be satisfied with the short end of the stick), it falls slightly short of his magic.