Monsieur Lecoq (novel) - Background

Background

Gaboriau first achieved publishing success with L’Affaire Lerouge, serialised in 1865, which featured the amateur detective, Tabaret, who recurs in his later novels. Gaboriau then went on to publish Le Crime d’Orcival (1867), Le Dossier no. 113 (1867), and Les Esclaves de Paris (1868).

In December 1867, Moïse Millaud and Gaboriau renewed their contract from the previous year, in which Gaboriau had committed to publishing his literary works in Millaud et Compagnie papers. It was decided to publish a longer work that Gaboriau had started in 1864, which he was now finishing. It would be entitled Monsieur Lecoq, the name of the policeman that the two preceding series had made famous. Millaud launched an extensive and shrewd publicity campaign to promote the work. Around 15 April 1868, walls in Paris and other French towns were covered with large multi-coloured posters, emblazoned with
MONSIEUR LECOQ!
MONSIEUR LECOQ!!
MONSIEUR LECOQ!!!
MONSIEUR LECOQ!!!
written in four diagonal lines. On 21 April, the same exclamations appeared on the fourth page on many newspapers, which aroused curiosity. In the Petit Journal of the same date, Timothée Trim feigned ignorance and astonishment, asking “What can this Monsieur Lecoq be?” On 15 May Millaud finally revealed to the public that Monsieur Lecoq was the title of a long work by Emile Gaboriau that they were going to publish. He stated that Monsieur Lecoq, who had hitherto made sporadic appearances in Gaboriau’s works, was to be the hero of this new story, and considered that they were correct in stating that this new work was of even greater interest than anything that Gaboriau had published. On 24 May newspaper vendors asked for a considerable increase in copies for the day Monsieur Lecoq was published for the first time. Publication started on 27 May and ended on 3 December, with a one week break between parts one and two between 31 July and 7 August. The novel was a considerable success.

The novel is split into two parts: I – L’Enquête (The Inquiry), II – L’Honneur du nom (The Honour of the Name). Binyon observes that this is a common structural characteristic of Gaboriau’s novels, which separates the different subjects of each part: “Each novel falls into two halves: the first begins with the discovery of the crime and narrates the activities of the detective; the second, which usually takes the form of a complicated family history, describes the events leading up to the crime.”