Fantomas

The shocking debut of France's most ruthless villain. After dinner, the guests of the Marquise de Langrune amuse one another with tales of the chilling deeds of Fantômas, a fiendish criminal whose reach is limitless, whose thirst for mayhem can never be quenched. The next morning, young Charles Rambert leaves early to meet his father at the train station. When he returns, the chateau is in an uproar. The Marquise has been slaughtered in her bed. She was found not long after Rambert's departure, her body soaked in blood, her neck severed all the way to the bone. Suspecting his son may be the killer, Charles's father insists they leave immediately. But Inspector Juve sees the hand of Fantômas in the grisly deed, and in two other dastardly crimes that have Paris in an uproar: the brazen theft of Princess Sonia's pocketbook and the murder of Lord Beltham, whose body was found stuffed in a trunk. Juve has pledged his life to apprehending the criminal mastermind and will stop at nothing to see Fantômas hang.

A noblewoman is hacked to death in her chateau, a Russian princess is boldly robbed in a posh hotel, and a lord's lifeless body is found stuffed inside a trunk. Everyone recognizes the deeds of Fantômas, a master of disguise whose daring and diabolical crimes paralyze Parisians with terror. One man has sworn to bring the phantom killer to justice: Inspector Juve, who ventures from dark alleys to brilliant salons in his relentless pursuit of the evil genius. The first in a series of wildly popular French thrillers, Fantômas created a sensation in pre-WWI Europe. The original pulp fiction, its appeal transcended every level of society. Cocteau, Colette, and Picasso were avid readers, and subsequent generations of artists, writers, and musicians have drawn inspiration from this enduringly stylish and suspenseful novel.