Justin Croft Antiquarian Books - Rare and Antiquarian Books and Manuscripts

First edition of an interesting early detective novel set largely in the pothouses, brothels and cabarets of Restoration Paris, in which a young soldier and his lover are pitted against a malevolent and corrupt police informer. It predates the Memoirs of Vidocq, habitually celebrated as the first work of detective fiction, by a couple of years. Lamothe-Langon, an associate of Charles Nodier and a prolific writer trod a wayward path between fact and fiction in his many works. Many of his historical ‘memoirs’ have been proved to be mostly fiction and his Histoire de l’Inquisition en France (1829) which purported to be a study of the French Inquisition and the great fourteenth century witch crazes of southern France has been shown to be almost entirely fabricated.