Fantômas.

He is everywhere and nowhere, a phantom of crime who slips through every net and leaves horror in his wake: Fantômas burst upon Paris as a sensation, and his first adventure still races along with pulp-fiction abandon.

What it's about

This is the opening novel in the celebrated French series featuring Fantômas, a ruthless and elusive master-criminal who commits appalling crimes under countless disguises and vanishes before justice can close in. Against him are set the tenacious detective who makes his capture a personal mission and a journalist drawn into the pursuit, as the story plunges through a Paris of menace, mystery and constant reversal.

Themes

The book revels in the fascination of the criminal genius, in disguise, deception and the fragility of ordinary security in the face of a truly ruthless will. It plays on modern anxieties about the anonymous city and the evil that can hide within it, and it treats crime with a lurid, almost dreamlike relish that later thrilled the Surrealists and helped define the popular thriller.

Why it still matters

Fantômas became an icon of French popular culture and a major influence on crime fiction, cinema and the avant-garde alike, admired by artists who saw in his shadowy world a strange modern poetry. As the origin of that phenomenon, this first novel is essential, a headlong entertainment that also marks a turning point in the history of the thriller.

Who it's for

For lovers of classic crime and pulp fiction, for readers curious about the roots of the modern thriller and its influence on film and art, and for anyone in the mood for a fast, dark, gloriously sensational chase through old Paris.