This early work by Émile Gaboriau was originally published in 1869 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introduction. 'Monsieur Lecoq' is one of Gaboriau's novels of crime and mystery. Émile Gaboriau was born in the small town of Saujon, Charente-Maritime, France. During his twenties, he became a secretary to Paul Féval - a an author now regarded as one of the fathers of modern crime fiction, whose Jean Diable (1862) is seen as the world's first modern detective novel.