= Very rare incunable of detective fiction. One copy in Dutch NCC: KB. Volume 1 covers renewed with modern boards (loose).Paul Féval (1816-1857) was a French novelist and dramatist and the author of legendary adventure novels, such as Le loup blanc (1843) and Le Bossu (1857) which made him world-famous. He was also the author of several vampire fiction novels, but his most important claim to fame is being one of the fathers of modern crime fiction. His novel Jean Diable (1862) may be considered the world's first modern novel of detective fiction. Féval's success started with Les Mysteres de Londres (1844), which was a sprawling feuilleton written to cash in on the success of Eugene Sue's Les Mysteres de Paris. In it, Irishman Fergus O'Breane tries to avenge the wrongs of his countrymen by seeking the annihilation of England. The plot anticipates that of Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Christo by one year. The novel features a maffia-like criminal secret society called Gentlemen of the Night, a theme that will become recurrent in Féval's oeuvre. Féval published the series under the psuedonym Sir Francis Trolopp. With Les Mysteres de Londres, Féval became the equal of Dumas and Sue in th eyes of his contemporaries. However, he was unhappy about his success as the author of adventure novels and soon tried to gain literary recognition with social satires, but without the desired success. In 1862 he published Jean Diable, arguably the first modern crime thriller. In it, Scotland Yard Chief Superintendent Gregory Temple is mystified by the actions of a supremely gifted crime leader who hides behind the identity of John Devil. In 1863, Féval embarked on his masterpiece, Les Habits noirs, a sprawling criminal saga written over a twelve-year period, comprising seven novels. He retroactively incorporated Les Mystères de Londres, Les Compagnons du Silence (itself a sequel to an earlier work, Bel Demonio (1850)) and Jean Diable into the chronology of Les Habits Noirs, creating a veritable human comedy of evil and secret conspiracies. By its methods, themes and characters, Les Habits Noirs is the precursor of today's conspiracy and organized crime novels. Féval's heroes, from Gregory Temple, the first detective, to Remy d'Arx, the investigative magistrate who pursues the Habits Noirs, are also the first modern heroes of their kind. (source: wikipedia).