It’s appropriate that the Netflix series Lupin, a show named after a master of disguise, could be described in many different ways, with few of those descriptions being entirely accurate. Lupin has apparently proved more popular even than the previous Netflix phenomenon The Queen’s Gambit, but it’s also harder to sum up. It’s inspired by…
It is commonly said that truth is stranger than fiction, and while I won’t go quite that far, I have to admit that the truth can be quite strange at times. Criminals can be extremely creative, with the most creative often being the most successful. As G.K. Chesterton wrote in his Father Brown story “The…
I had only been in Japan for a couple of days, but I had already perfected my answer to the constant question: why are you studying Japanese? My answer: because I like Japanese detective fiction. Which always leads to discussions about how I got to know about Japanese detective fiction, etc. But one day, I…
The first American writer to use fingerprints in solving crime was the famous Mark Twain in his perhaps-embellished memoir about life as a steamboat pilot, titled Life on the Mississippi, published in 1883. In chapter 31, “A Thumb-print and What Came of It,” he has a character, inspired by an old “French prison-keeper” use a…
