Fantômas
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
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.
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PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the mode reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes and his ineradicable nemesis, the virtually immortal Professor Moriarty, Inspector Juve dedicates himself to the relentless pursuit of that evil genius Fantomas. He is, as they say in petrified Paris, "Nothing. . . Everything. . . Nobody. . . Somebody.'' And what does he do? He ``spreads terror,'' diabolically, craftily beyond all imagining: slashes throats of kindly old ladies; stuffs strangled British socialites into trunks; boldly robs Russian princesses in their hotel rooms; pushes witnesses off speeding trains to their deaths. Can Juve prevail against that hellish power? Men masquerade as women; suicides return from the dead; ladies wail ``What am I to do?'' and faint from surprise and shock. Juve finally hunts Fantomas down. But a surprise awaits, leaving the charmed reader of this French bestseller hoping to see more of the weird pair. Ashbery's introduction not seen by PW.