This is pretty silly, but I think it speaks for its times. It's sort of a mystery/thriller from a century ago. It's slightly better than pulp, but certainly not literature. All in all, it's entertaining, escapist reading.

So, the journalist, Jerome Fandor is out on the streets of Paris late at night. He sees a man drinking alone and recognizes the man as being Frederick-Christian II, the King of Hesse-Weimar. So Fandor strikes up a relationship and the two drink the night away. Eventually, they stagger off to the rooms of one Susy d'Orsel. She's the king's mistress. They sit down for a drink and a meal. But, when she is out of the room, Susy d'Orsel seems to fall out of the window and splat on the courtyard a few stories below. The king disappears to investigate, and then just vanishes. The police show up and mistake Fandor for the King. The question in the minds of the police is whether Susy d'Orsay committed suicide, or was murdered? If murdered, it must have been at the king's hand. Something like that.

But, we have a problem. It would be rather a diplomatic problem to arrest the king for murder, so the presumed king, Fandor, is shipped back to his rooms at the Royal Arms Hotel.

Eventually, the famous police detective, Juve is brought in. It turns out that he's a pal of Fandor and the two of them figure the problem is that the infamous master criminal, Fantômas, is involved. Most likely, he's trying to find a way to steal a massive diamond belonging to the King of Hesse-Weimar.

Juve goes off to Hesse-Weimar to investigate at that end. Fandor investigates in Paris. He finds the king has been stashed inside a statue, or something. So he contrives to extract the king and gets trapped inside himself. And so on.

Lots of switching personna, lots of people who might not be what they seem, in particular, it seems that Susy d'Orsel lives in a building managed by Mme. Citron, who might also be The Marquis de Sérac, and perhaps also Ouaouaoua, the Primitive Man.

I gather that Souvestre and Allain wrote rather a number of books about the arch criminal Fantômas, and that at the end of each book, Fantômas escapes to promulgate yet more perfidy in the next volume.

This book is a bit of light fun. Don't expect that everything will make complete sense. Just follow the action and be amused for a time. This is throwaway literature, amusing, but nothing that will last. It's really ***-. ( )