Maurice Leblanc

Maurice Marie Emile Leblanc was a French novelist and writer of short stories, known primarily as the creator of the fictional gentleman thief and detective Arsene Lupin, often described as a French counterpart to Arthur Conan Doyle's creation Sherlock Holmes. Born in 1864 and dying in 1941, he wrote a long series of Lupin adventures that remain popular in French crime fiction. The first Lupin story appeared in a series of short stories serialized in the magazine Je sais tout, starting in July 1905. It was created at the request of an editor, and Leblanc may have been influenced by the gentleman thief in works by Octave Mirbeau.