M. Lecoq is called in to solve the mystery of the murder of the Count and Countess of Tremorel. The Countess is found dead in the garden by a father-son duo poaching on the estate, and the Count has disappeared. He too is presumed dead. But is he? Lecoq will figure out the case.

I found the storytelling a bit confusing in this one because of the shifts in time. Lecoq didn’t really do much, either. He was more of a project-manager kind of detective, sending out his men to investigate things and synthesizing the evidence. Then the crime kind of solves itself. He seems to be a prototypical Sherlock Holmes, with his vast stores of knowledge, his irregulars, and his penchant for disguise.

I finished this book because it was on Serial Reader, but I would not likely have read it otherwise. ( )

The second outing of Monsieur Lecoq, this time to a small town on the borders of the Seine, where the comtesse de Trémorel has been found murdered. There's not much actual sleuthing going on, but the psychological portraits painted of the victim and her killer are very convincing. It would have been an easy read if here hadn't been so many typos and commas in the wrong place. I suspect this edition has been produced from a digitised version with sloppy OCR. Apart from this, very enjoyable.
ETC ( )