THE EXPLOITS OF ROCAMBOLE (Les Exploits de Rocambole English Edition)

Paris, 1851. A mute stranger with a ruined face and a torn-out tongue steps off the boat from South America. The savages could not kill him. His own pupil will.

The false marquis de Chamery is winning. Concepcion de Sallandrera is nearly his, her fortune nearly in reach — and then the past walks back into Paris. Sir Williams, the master criminal once broken by his enemies, disfigured and cast among a cannibal tribe at the edge of the world, has crawled home: silent, faceless, and more dangerous than ever. Rocambole takes him back as counsellor, and together they close in on the Sallandrera millions through blackmail, forged papers and quiet murder. But a man who cannot speak can still betray. To bury the last witness to who he truly is, Rocambole must destroy the one person who made him — and he has never balked at a killing, not even the woman who raised him. Meanwhile, in a mansion across the city, Baccarat — now Countess Artoff — has recognized the hand behind the crimes, and begins to pull the thread that will unravel everything.

When Rocambole ran in the Paris press in 1858–59, readers followed each instalment the way we binge a series today — and its hero's crimes were so audacious that French coined a word from his name: rocambolesque, "wildly improbable."

Newly translated by Sofia E.V. Hamett from Ponson du Terrail's original serials, this edition is written in the natural English of a modern thriller: faithful to the plot, the characters and the events, and alive on the page for today's reader. Complete and unabridged.

Part II of The Exploits of Rocambole — the story concludes in Part III. New to the saga? The game begins in Book One, The Mysterious Inheritance.