Mauriceleblanc Stories

Twenty years ago, Arthur Kwon, the "Skeleton Key" of New York, was sent to Rikers Island for a crime he didn't commit, leaving his son with nothing but a stack of novels about a French gentleman thief and a thirst for justice. Today, a new phantom haunts the neon-lit streets of Manhattan. Ben Kwon, a master of disguise and misdirection, has begun systematically dismantling the empire of Sterling Vane, the billionaire who framed his father.

The Hollow Needle is a novel by Maurice Leblanc featuring the adventures of the gentleman thief, Arsène Lupin. As with the preceding two volumes of the Arsène Lupin stories, this was first serialized in the French magazine Je sais tout from November 1908 to May 1909. The novel was released, with a few modifications, in June 1909.

Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar (French: Arsène Lupin, gentleman-cambrioleur) is the first collection of stories by Maurice Leblanc recounting the adventures of Arsène Lupin, released on 10 June 1907. Containing the first eight stories depicting the character, each was first published in the French magazine Je sais tout following the first on 15 July 1905. The seventh features fictional English detective Sherlock Holmes, as does the second collection of stories, Arsene Lupin vs. Herlock Sholmes.

"Lupin," I said, "tell me something about yourself." "Why, what would you have me tell you? Everybody knows my life!" replied Lupin, who lay drowsing on the sofa in my study. "Nobody knows it!" I protested. "People know from your letters in the newspapers that you were mixed up in this case, that you started that case. But the part which you played in it all, the plain facts of the story, the upshot of the mystery: these are things of which they know nothing."

The rays of the September sun flooded the great halls of the old chateau of the Dukes of Charmerace, lighting up with their mellow glow the spoils of so many ages and many lands, jumbled together with the execrable taste which so often afflicts those whose only standard of value is money.