Arsène Lupin Intervenes

New York: The Macaulay Company. Very Good. (c.1929). First American Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket, but encased in a nice-looking facsimile reproduction of the original first edition jacket; see 2nd image posted with this listing) [light wear to extremities, upper right corner of front cover heavily bumped, small red stain at top edge of front cover, slight fading to spine cloth; ex-Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Script Department copy, with related stamping and remnants of MGM label on front endpaper]. The 17th Arsène Lupin book, featuring the gentleman thief and master of disguise. This is actually a collection of nine stories, in all of which Lupin appears under the guise of private detective Jim Barnett, "of the Barnett Agency." (The book's original title when published in France in 1928 was "L'Agence Barnett et Cie"; it was also issued in England as "Jim Barnett Intervenes.") Rather than a novel, it presents nine stories, in each of which Barnett/Lupin pits his wits against Inspector Béchoux, "that immaculate sprig of the Paris Police Force." (Lupin is often characterized as "the French Sherlock Holmes," which would make Béchoux his Inspector Lestrade.) The nine stories, following a brief Foreword, are: "'Drops That Trickle Away'"; "The Royal Love Letter"; "A Game of Baccarat"; "The Man with the Gold Teeth"; "Twelve Little N-gg-r Boys"; "The Bridge That Broke" (not included in the original French edition, according to one source); "The Fatal Miracle"; "Double Entry"; "Arresting Arsène Lupin!". These are followed by an 2-page Afterword, in which Barnett/Lupin informs Béchoux by telephone that he has used his connections with the "higher-ups" to secure the Inspector a nice promotion. It's interesting to note that this book once belonged to the M-G-M Script Department; M-G-M did make a couple of Arsène Lupin movies (in 1932 and 1938), but neither one seems to have been directly based on any of the Leblanc books. NOTE again that this book bears a FACSIMILE dust jacket, which has not been factored in to our pricing. . (Inventory #: 29598)