[Gutenberg 1563] • The Crystal Stopper

The Crystal Stopper is a mystery novel by Maurice Leblanc featuring the adventures of the gentleman thief Ars�ne Lupin. The novel appeared in serial form in the French newspaper Le Journal from September to November 1912 and was released as a novel subsequently. Maurice Leblanc was inspired by the infamous Panama scandals of 1892 and 1893. The novel borrows from Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Purloined Letter the idea of hiding an object in plain sight. Plot summary During a burglary at the home of Deputy Daubrecq a crime is committed and two accomplices of Ars�ne Lupin are arrested by the police. One is guilty of the crime, the other innocent but both will be sentenced to death. Lupin seeks to deliver the victim of a miscarriage of justice, but struggles against Deputy Daubrecq's ruthless blackmailer, who has an incriminating document hidden in a crystal stopper......... Maurice Marie Emile Leblanc (11 November 1864 - 6 November 1941) was a French novelist and writer of short stories, known primarily as the creator of the fictional gentleman thief and detective Ars�ne Lupin, often described as a French counterpart to Arthur Conan Doyle's creation Sherlock Holmes. Biography: Leblanc was born in Rouen, Normandy, where he was educated at Lyc�e Pierre-Corneille. After studying in several countries and dropping out of law school, he settled in Paris and began to write fiction, both short crime stories and longer novels. The latter, heavily influenced by writers like Gustave Flaubert and Guy de Maupassant, were critically admired but had little commercial success. Leblanc was largely considered little more than a writer of short stories for various French periodicals until the first Ars�ne Lupin story appeared in a series of short stories that was serialized in the magazine Je sais tout, starting in No. 6, dated 15 July 1905. Clearly created at editorial request under the influence of and in reaction to the wildly successful Sherlock Holmes stories, the roguish and glamorous Lupin was a surprise success and Leblanc's fame and fortune beckoned. In total, Leblanc went on to write 21 Lupin novels or collections of short stories. The character of Lupin might have been based by Leblanc on French anarchist Marius Jacob, whose trial made headlines in March 1905. It is also possible that Leblanc had also read Octave Mirbeau's Les 21 jours d'un neurasth�nique (1901), which features a gentleman thief named Arthur Lebeau, and he had seen Mirbeau's comedy Scrupules (1902), whose main character is a gentleman thief. It was not influenced by E. W. Hornung's gentleman thief, A.J. Raffles, created in 1899, whom Leblanc had not read.By 1907, Leblanc had graduated to writing full-length Lupin novels, and the reviews and sales were so good that Leblanc effectively dedicated the rest of his career to working on the Lupin stories. Like Conan Doyle, who often appeared embarrassed or hindered by the success of Sherlock Holmes and seemed to regard his success in the field of crime fiction as a detraction from his more "respectable" literary ambitions, Leblanc also appeared to have resented Lupin's success. Several times, he tried to create other characters, such as private eye Jim Barnett, but he eventually merged them with Lupin. He continued to pen Lupin tales well into the 1930s. Leblanc also wrote two notable science fiction novels: Les Trois Yeux (1919), in which a scientist makes televisual contact with three-eyed Venusians, and Le Formidable Ev�nement (1920), in which an earthquake creates a new landmass between England and France. Leblanc was awarded the L�gion d'Honneur for his services to literature, and died in Perpignan in 1941. He was buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery. Georgette Leblanc was his sister....