Monsieur Lecoq, created in 1866 by Émile Gaboriau, is the first police detective hero in fiction. A meticulous and relentless investigator, the character of Lecoq influenced the creation of later fictional detectives and is cited in Conan-Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes adventure, A Study in Scarlet. In Monsieur Lecoq, two men are found dead at a bar in a seedy area of Paris, and a third man, wounded, stands in the doorway and dies shortly afterwards. To the Inspector of Police, the case seems straightforward - a pub brawl that ended in murder - but Lecoq is unconvinced and is permitted to investigate further with the help of an older officer, Father Absinthe. In the course of his investigations - which take an ever-tortuous direction - Lecoq is assisted by the 'armchair' detective Tabaret, and it becomes clear that the solution to the case lies in a long-standing rivalry between two prominent Parisian families.
Narrator David Timson, renowned for his narration of the Sherlock Homes canon, performs this slowly unfolding tale of murder and deception written by a pioneer of detective stories in 1868. After the murder of two men and the injury of a third, sharp-eyed police detective Monsieur Lecoq follows clues through the streets of Paris. For the narrative Timson adopts a flat accent, which contrasts with
