Monsieur Lecoq
“Narrator David Timson, renowned for his narration of the Sherlock Homes canon, performs this slowly unfolding tale of murder and deception written by a pioneer of detective stories in 1868…For the narrative Timson adopts a flat accent, which contrasts with his subtle French inflections in the dialogue, especially that of the gendarmes. Timson’s tone rises with the drama as he navigates the plethora of details and the intense wrangling among Lecoq and company. While the plot is convoluted and sometimes ponderous, Timson breathes life into Monsieur Lecoq.”
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Monsieur Lecoq, created in 1866 by Émile Gaboriau, is the first police detective hero in fiction. A meticulous and relentless investigator, the character of Lecoq influenced the creation of later fictional detectives and is cited in Conan-Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes adventure, A Study in Scarlet.
In Monsieur Lecoq, two men are found dead at a bar in a seedy area of Paris, and a third man, wounded, stands in the doorway and dies shortly afterwards. To the Inspector of Police, the case seems straightforward—a pub brawl that ended in murder—but Lecoq is unconvinced and is permitted to investigate further with the help of an older officer, Father Absinthe.
In the course of his investigations, which take an ever-tortuous direction, Lecoq is assisted by the “armchair” detective Tabaret, and it becomes clear that the solution to the case lies in a long-standing rivalry between two prominent Parisian families.
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