Vidocq maintained that he was a high-spirited lad who fell into bad company at an early age and was framed while in prison for a relatively minor offense. A stiff sentence following the alleged frame-up led to a series of escapes, captures, and imprisonments. A period of almost continuous warfare and civil strife.
The narrative is filled with daring escapes, re-captures, mutinies and desertions Vidocq claimed to have served in more than one army and navy under several assumed identities , duels, sexual escapades, crimes and criminals of all types and descriptions too numerous to mention. How much is fact, how much fiction? What is known is the influence Vidocq had on modern policing and the crime novel.
The edition I read is probably taken from a 19th century translation, and has numerous typos. Moreover, it translates 19th century Parisian underworld slang into 19th century London underworld slang, which might leave many readers either scratching their heads or searching online for a suitable dictionary of period criminal argot. One person found this helpful. A good biography about Vidocq. The inspiration for literary consulting detectives genre.
The extraordinary Vidocq wrote with help this engrossing tale of law and disorder, crime and punishment, escape and evasion. A clever, energetic man, he got in and out of more jails than a dozen other abusers of the law. He turned his criminal inclinations to enforcing the law, capturing the hardest-to-capture felons in France during the Revolution and the decades soon after. Hard to put down, blemished with some errors of fact and grammar, this memoir is well worth reading.
It took a tough man to live this hard a life! This is an interesting work. It claims to be a new translation of the genuine autobiography of Eugene Vidocq which was first published in I was a little bit skeptical of that claim, but when I dug into the narrative, I was impressed by the writing. There is certainly an authenticity to the wordplay.
The narrative is rich and rolling and "stretches out its legs" to create nice descriptions where a modern author would rush things. That being said, the work is not cumbersome. The language is well-constructed but not difficult. I've read more celebrated biographies such as those by Charles Chaplin and Ghandi and I found this one to be more purely entertaining.
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How much liberty has been taken in sacrificing truth for the sake of a rousing tale is debatable, but that doesn't change the fact that this book is an excellent read! A master of disguises and an accomplished thief, Vidocq made a long way from his criminal beginning to the life of the first chief of the secret police. Not afraid to thread the thin line between the law enforcement and the unlawful actions when the case demanded that, he was an amazing character to read about, especially when the story is told in his own words and out of his very memories.
A special treat for the lovers of classical thrillers and suspense, spies and nail-biting action. The trouble he got himself in and out of would be enough for the average person to retreat.
But not Vidocq, he was a unique individual. It was fascinating to read about his life as a criminal, I thoroughly enjoyed this entertaining book. This is not your ordinary story, but well worth reading for anyone who enjoy books about crime. As a student of Criminal Justice, I love reading tales of those that brought us to where we are today in the field. Having not heard of Detective Vidocq before, I found this to be a fascinating read. Detective Vidocq is an interesting character: I had a hard time putting this one down and will definitely seek out more works about him!
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Vidocq (French Edition) eBook: Arthur Bernède: theranchhands.com: Kindle Store
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AmazonGlobal Ship Orders Internationally. Amazon Inspire Digital Educational Resources. Amazon Rapids Fun stories for kids on the go. Vidocq is imprisoned, becomes either feared or loved by his fellow-prisoners, guards, etc. Vidocq has no qualms about spinning out these stories to great length.
In one notable chapter, where we set out with Vidocq helping a drunk companion find his way to a brothel, the story does not end until months later, having covered police raids, pirates, sea voyages, shipwreck and mutiny.
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The movement in the narrative comes slowly, but it is appreciated when it does arrive. Vidocq from quite early on professes a distaste for spending time with criminals, because it brutalises him -- it is in prison that he learns many of his more disreputable skills, and becomes entangled with characters who will pull him down in the outside world. He does not cease to escape prison, and accumulates something of a reputation for his abilities in that regard, but his exploits become slowly bent more toward him finding gainful employment of some kind -- under a false identity, usually. This comes to its head when, having met and married the woman he would call his wife at the time of publication, and running a warehouse business with some success, he finds himself entrapped by three ex-cons who extort him with the threat of reporting him to the police.
He is eventually captured again, and this time he resolves on another way out: This begins roughly the third quarter of the collected volume: Vidocq the spy and policeman. He demonstrates his worth in prison by reporting on the particulars of crimes he extracts from fellows there -- a dangerous occupation he manages to carry off because of his own celebrity amongst criminals and his general-purpose social engineering skills. He is then permitted to 'escape' and runs for a while in Paris amongst the criminals, helping police find the more notorious of such. This sort of 'setting a thief' was, it later becomes clear, the S.
P for French authorities of the day. Vidocq protests rather strongly that he never did what most of said agents did, and entrap thieves by leading them to commit a particular crime and then catching them in the act of it. Make of that what you will.
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Vidoqc is rather too effective, however, and quickly raises the ire of the thieves and policemen both, by catching the former more effectively than the latter. He becomes head of the Bureau de Suretie, a sort of public-safety police. This gives rise to the new script for a significant proportion of the Memoirs, which is Vidocq in disguise engineering himself into the good graces of some criminals, being invited along to commit crime with them, sending warning to the police, passing time with the criminals by drinking and talking about that 'damned Vidoqc', and then arresting them in the act while he was meant to be standing watch.
These accounts lose the strict chronology of the earlier half of the book, so the sequence of events becomes somewhat confused. The final quarter of the Memoirs goes decidedly off-script. Vidoqc promises us that he will provide a reveal of the entirety of the operations of the police, but quite conspicuously fails to do that -- a note in the appendices of this version suggests this might be down to interventions from his successor in office, who if so somehow failed to notice all of Vidocq's unflattering references to him personally.
Instead, Vidocq regales us with a sort of typography of criminals, according to the names they use themselves to delineate their trade, and punctuates this with some stories of example criminals. One of these, the story of Adele, is notable for its social commentary -- Vidocq points out the extreme conditions that poverty can force people to, in an undoubtedly fictional but imaginative biography over several chapters. The concluding note, however, is strangely limp. The actual autobiography petered out well before the end of the text, and if it were not for the editorial notes you would not even understand that Vidocq left his office in Paris.
The criminal typography is interesting, but hardly a memoir, and seems almost spun out to fill an engagement with a bookseller. The mystery, frustratingly, seems unanswered. For those looking to read of Vidocq's life, this is not necessarily a good source. To be true, a great deal of detail is preserved about his early exploits, but the verity of these accounts is open to question -- certainly the unnamed Translator catches him in a fabrication regarding one account of London, with which Vidocq was obviously unfamiliar -- and there is very little material about Vidocq's later life, which seems to have been when all his most notable accomplishments took place.
The establishment of the French National Police, and the first detective agency, are all beyond these memoirs' timeframe. The memoirs are probably best read for entertainment value, where the exact truth is less important than the adventure, occasional wit, and rare glimpses of social commentary. Nov 12, Judah T. Lovers of true crime or early detective fiction. Compared to "You Can't Win". Where Jack Black recounts his exploits with a good dose of self effacement and folksy charm, Vidocq loves to toot his own horn.
It just got kind of boring after a little while. I finished it anyway because I am O. Oct 26, Tosh rated it really liked it. Very similar to Fantomas and Lupin, but all true! Master criminal who becomes super cop in the mid's. Inspiration for the above two as well as to Poe among others. Sort of the essential true-crime book to own. View all 3 comments. Mar 17, Rex Hurst rated it really liked it. An abridged version of the original written in French in , it is actually the first of four novels by the author. The others being Thieves: Seemingly forgotten the name of Vidocq carried great weight in post-revolutionary France and England.
In a sense, he was the original police detective and inspired the entire genre of fiction. Hugo, who was aquainted with them man, took him as insp An abridged version of the original written in French in , it is actually the first of four novels by the author. Charles Dickens consulted with him when writing Great Expectations. Edgar Allen Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle were both influenced by the memoirs when creating their famous detectives and the man is mentioned by name in Moby Dick.
Some notable real life lawmen took inspiration and copied techniques described by Vidocq in the Memoirs. Both Allan Pinkerton, founder of the famous or infamous, depending on your political bent Pinkerton Detective Agency, and J. Edgar Hoover of FBI fame, praised the work and read it religiously. He refers to himself as the Master of Crime, I assume due to his ability to root out criminals, as his career as a felon seems to mostly consist of womanizing, petty thievery, drunken brawls, desertion of duty, and escapes from prison- rather than big scores.
And while he did break out of a number of prisons, he kept getting caught. Already familiar with French criminal underworld and its argot, he launched into his he job with a hungry appetite. Soon he became too well known to operate effectively, so he began to master the art of disguise and affecting different accents. This lead him to eventually be inducted into the police as an inspector and then be given his own semi-autonomous squad. There he help to pioneer or champion various techniques to cut down on counterfeiting a large problem at the time , crime scene investigations, and rudimentary ballistic testing.
His success brought on many enemies both inside the police and out. Jealousy of his achievements caused many on his side of the fence to view him as a threat. At least according to him. So I have no doubt that this arrogance helped to garner him a vast number of professional detractors. But I have to point out here that most of the cases he discusses as a police detective were well known at the time and the facts could easy be check up on, even if now they have wallowed into obscurity.
And in a sense the accuracy of the memoirs is unimportant. Like those who argue about the historical existence of King Arthur, the stories themselves have shaped our culture much more than any truth could have. Look at the list above again and see what it inspired, then think on how much else was inspired by those works and you will see, exaggerated or not, the Memoirs of Vidocq are extremely culturally valuable.
Dec 28, Alex rated it really liked it. Like meeting one of those people who has a seemingly endless trove of amazing stories, at first you're enthralled, but after a while, you're kind of ready for the guy to shut up. That being said, this book is a great window into the criminal classes of France at the turn of the 19th century.
And what's really fascinating is speculating on the motives for the way Vidocq presents himself. I'm not sure how much of the style is standard braggadaccio of the era, how much of it is an indictment of the Like meeting one of those people who has a seemingly endless trove of amazing stories, at first you're enthralled, but after a while, you're kind of ready for the guy to shut up. I'm not sure how much of the style is standard braggadaccio of the era, how much of it is an indictment of the standards of justice at the time, and how much of it is a desperate attempt to justify his evolution from fugitive to police spy.
Sometimes, he seems fully justified in the tricks he plays to arrest criminals, and you can sympathize with his desire to rid society of the kind of people who roped him into the fugitive life. Other times, his methods just seem like outrageous entrapment. His stories often involve disguising himself as a close friend of a certain criminal, tricking the criminal's family into believing that he is trying to help so and so escape justice, and then arresting the whole family. He occassionally seems regretful of tricks like these, but mostly dismissive.
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And how much of it is true? When a public official says something along the lines of "Oh, all those people who are accusing me of setting up crimes so I can take kickbacks and get credit for arresting the criminals are just jealous of my success," your first question for that official is probably going to be, "Are you lying? Jul 27, Danny rated it liked it. Equal parts fascinating and long-in-the-tooth.
Vidocq recounts his life of crime that transforms into his becoming one of the most celebrated and feared members of the Paris Police force in the early s. No doubt that Vidocq can tell a tale, but the one problem with the book is that it reads more like a series of anecdotes and episodes, rather than a memoir with a conventional arc.
Vidocq is a transformed man by the end, but you never really feel that transformation. It happens as a matter of Equal parts fascinating and long-in-the-tooth.