This is my first real exposure to French pulp novel fiction, and it is the first of some 20 novels on the subject of Fantomas. A tale of a master criminal and the police detective/inspector who seeks to find him and have him face the ultimate price for his crimes, but with both being clever rivals and masters of disguise.

Murder, Theft, Identity Swapping and much more cross these pages, with sensational twists and turns and establishing of alibis that seem impossible to break.

This is early, but solid, pulp fiction, with luridness and twisty plots but minus the impossible feats and super science of say the Fu Manchu stories or the Doc Savage school of adventure novels.

Worth reading overall, but do not go into it expecting American style pulp or Sherlock Holmes style deductive reasoning or TV CSI style crime solving.