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    Monsieur Lecoq Part 1: The Inquiry
    Monsieur Lecoq Part 1: The Inquiry
    Monsieur Lecoq Part 1: The Inquiry
    Audiobook11 hours

    Monsieur Lecoq Part 1: The Inquiry

    Written by Emile Gaboriau

    Narrated by LibriVox Community

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Monsieur Lecoq is a captivating mystery, historical and love story :

    Around 11 o'clock, on the evening of Shrove Sunday 18.., close to the old Barrière d'Italie, frightful cries, coming from Mother Chupin's drinking-shop, are heard by a party of detectives led by Inspector Gévrol. The squad runs up to it. A triple murder has just been committed. The murderer is caught on the premises.

    Despite Gévrol's opinion that four scoundrels encountered each other in this vile den, that they began to quarrel, that one of them had a revolver and killed the others, Lecoq, a young police agent, suspects a great mystery.

    He will lead his investigation until he gets to the bottom of it. The story takes us in the dark times of France after the Revolution and in the Terror, and finds its roots in a story of love and power. (Summary by Ezwa, expanded by Nadine)

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLibriVox
    Release dateAug 25, 2014
    Monsieur Lecoq Part 1: The Inquiry

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    Reviews for Monsieur Lecoq Part 1

    3.5/5

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    • 3/5
      4 Stars for the story.
      1 Star for narration.

      This is the book that inspired Doyle to create Sherlock Holmes. He based Homes on a real life person, of course, but it's known that Monsieur Lecoq inspired him to write detective stories.

      This review has NO spoilers, and is a review of Monsieur Lecoq Part 1 only.
      Great story.

      This is amongst one of the first "case files" genre of a police procedural murder mystery. This story focuses on how a young French policeman, Monsieur Lecoq, finds clues from what the dead--and the living, unwittingly-- leave behind a gruesome murder scene in a bar in the seediest part of town. (Note: the crime scene is discussed as being "gruesome", but there's nothing more than description of a man having been shot in the head, etc. No gruesome descriptions.)

      This story is so endearing because of its eponymous protagonist, a novice officer who makes a deal with his superior officer that there's more to this murder than meets the eye, and "Father Absinthe ", a disinterested policeman in his 50s who wants nothing more than to go to sleep rather than help the novice Lecoq find clues, that is until he sees the young officer at work! I can't recall the last time I was so excited about finding out more about our two main characters.

      The story moves along quickly. Trust me, if you enjoy murder mysteries, you'll love this story, and especially Monsieur Lecoq and Father Absinthe! Lecoq is quite inventive in figuring out ways to preserve the crime scene years before these techniques became common police procedure.

      (The story is so interesting, I made myself listen to some pretty unbearable narrators just to continue getting on with the story.)

      The story moves a bit slowly from here until the "end", but it's quite interesting to see how Lecoq learns how to better his detective skills and "deduction" from an older man, a story plot that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle admittedly took from this book and used in his Sherlock Holmes stories-- even mentioning Lecoq in one Holmes story as a nod to the fascinating and groundbreaking Monsieur Lecoq books. Even so, Monsieur Lecoq (the book) is quite different from any Sherlock Holmes story or book.

      I love the Lecoq character and his fumbling and bumbling sidekick Father Absinthe.

      The PROBLEM with this long book is just when you think Lecoq is going to arrest the culprit, Part 1 abruptly ends. Part 2 starts and goes back in time into the history of the French Revolution and what may have caused the culprit to commit such a heinous crime. At this point we still don't know if he IS the culprit . . . I'll assume he is, otherwise why would the author spend an entire book on his life story? I still wish the culprit was arrested at the end of Part 1 and the reason given, as I have no interest in listening to 20 hours of this mans life history--especially since previewing the narration on the Livrivox website and finding the narration lacking in Part 2 as lacking as in Part 1.

      THE NARRATION IS SO POOR IN TOO MANY CHAPTERS OF PART 1--- SOME NARRATORS EGREGIOUSLY UNABLE TO PRONOUNCE ENGLISH (EITHER TRANSATLANTIC OR STANDARD AMERICAN ENGLISH) DUE TO THICK FRENCH, BELGIUM, AND FINNISH ACCENTS -- AS MUCH AS I LOVED THE STORY, I CANNOT LISTEN TO 43 MORE CHAPTERS WHERE MANY OF THEM I HAD TO LISTEN TO MULTIPLE TIMES TO UNDERSTAND WHAT WAS GOING ON. LIVRIVOX SHOULD HAVE HIGHER STANDARDS*. ALSO, EACH NARRATOR PRONOUNCED THE CHARACTER'S NAMES DIFFERENTLY WHICH, SINCE THEIR NAMES WERE FRENCH, MADE THINGS QUITE CONFUSING. THE SAME GOES FOR THE PRONUNCIATION OF THE STREETS AND MUNICIPAL BUILDINGS.

      *I have read a great deal of debate on the web about LibriVox using multiple narrators who's pronunciations don't match up. The consensus is that if multiple narrators are used, the names of the characters, locations, etc., in the book should be uniform. I agree with this 100%.