The Literary Origins of Netflix’s Latest Smash Hit
<em>Lupin</em>, the French-language series about a charismatic thief, embraces its source material—and then transcends it.
Before Arsène Lupin was the inspiration for an out-of-nowhere Netflix smash hit, projected to be watched by , the character was a French literary legend, a gentleman thief with the moral code of Robin Hood, the wits of Sherlock Holmes, and the anti-aristocratic instincts of Robespierre. In the 1906 story “The Queen’s Necklace,” one of Maurice Leblanc’s first outings for the character, his origins are explained: Lupin’s first robbery was staged when he was 6 years old, after witnessing his mother, an impoverished gentlewoman, being ill-treated by her monied employer. The the child managed to pinch also features in the first episode of , in which a janitor working at
