The First Detective

A biography of the French criminal who became the father of modern criminology and inspired authors like Balzac, Dickens, Doyle, Hugo, and Poe.

Vidocq was the Inspector Morse, the Sherlock Holmes, the James Bond of his day. A notorious criminal in his youth, he became a police officer and employed a gang of ex-convicts as his detectives. He developed innovative criminal indexing techniques and experimented with fingerprinting, until his cavalier attitude towards the thin blue line forced him out of the police. So he began the world’s very first private detective agency. The cases he solved were high profile, and gradually he grew in notoriety. However, his reputation didn’t prevent him from becoming a spy and moving secretly across the dangerous borders of Europe. The First Detective is a gloriously enjoyable historical romp through the eighteenth century in the company of the man whose influence on law enforcement still holds to this day.

Praise for The First Detective

“You really must read . . . The First Detective.” —Sunday Times (UK)

“Entertaining.” —Sunday Telegraph (UK)