Publisher's Synopsis
Gaboriau was the first French novelist to write detective novels. His character Monsieur Lecoq, private detective, first appeared in the novel, The Widow Lerouge. The novel begins: On February 20, 18-, a Sunday that chanced to be Shrove Sunday, about eleven o'clock in the evening, a party of agents of the safety-service left the police-station at the old Barriere d'Italie.
