The First Detective: The Life And Revolutionary Times Of Eugene-Francois Vidocq Criminal, Spy and Private Eye - Hardcover

Morton, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0091887968 ISBN 13: 9780091887964

Publisher: Ebury Pr, 2004

Synopsis

Eugene Vidocq was born in France in 1775 and his life spanned the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars and the 1848 revolutions. When Vidocq himself published his memoirs they were an overnight bestseller - a European publishing sensation. He was the Morse, the Guv'nor, the James Bond of his day. A notorious criminal and prison escaper, he turned police officer and employed a gang of ex-convicts as his detectives. His triumphs were many and he was the darling of the Parisian press - actresses, politicians and thieves hung on his every word. He invented innovative criminal indexing techniques and experimented with fingerprinting. He passed in disguise through the highest and lowest of European society, until his cavalier attitude towards the thin blue line meant he was forced out of the police. So he began the world's very first private detective agency. The cases he solved were high profile, from forgery in Pimlico to stolen jewels in the South of France, and he himself grew in notor

About this title

About the Author:

Previously a solicitor for twenty-five years, James Morton then worked as editor of Law Journal and Criminal Lawyer. He is now a full-time writer and author of the bestselling Gangland series published by Little Brown.

Review:

"The author tracks the shadowy figure whose exploits inspired novelists." — –Los Angeles Times

"An impressively exhaustive examination." — –Sacramento/San Francisco Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Ebury Pr
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0091887968
• ISBN 13: 9780091887964
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 340