File No. 113

A daring theft opens this classic of early detective fiction. Three hundred and fifty thousand francs vanish overnight from the safe of a respected Parisian banker, though only two men held keys. Suspicion falls at once on the honest young cashier Prosper Bertomy, but the aging amateur sleuth Pere Tabaret, and later Gaboriau’s cool professional Lecoq, refuse to accept the obvious answer. Reading the scratches on the strongbox and the secrets buried in the family’s past, they slowly untangle a plot rooted in old betrayals and forged identities. Written in 1867, the novel helped establish the methods of clue and deduction that later detective writers would make famous. It is available to download as a free PDF and EPUB edition.