The Blonde Lady: Being a Record of the Duel of Wits Between Arsène Lupin and the English Detective

A professor purchases a writing desk for his daughter's birthday. Inside lies a winning lottery ticket worth a million francs. Within days, the desk is stolen by Arsène Lupin, the legendary French thief who openly declares the ticket his. When the professor's daughter is kidnapped in the crossfire, only one man can stop Lupin: Herlock Sholmes, an eccentric English detective with a brilliance to match the thief's own. What follows is a scintillating duel of wits, a high-stakes game of intelligence and morality where every move begets a counter-move. Leblanc crafts his tale with gleeful verve, letting his charming rogue monologue with theatrical delight while the detective matches him insult for insult. The novel essentially invented the "great detective meets his match" genre, and its parody of a certain Baker Street sleuth caused such outrage that Leblanc had to rename the character in later editions. A century later, the chemistry between these two titanic egos still crackles.