The next book in Maurice LeBlanc's Arsene Lupin series is 813. It was originally serialized in a newspaper, Le Journal, in 1910. A condensed version was published in book form the same year, and then a revised version of that came out in 1917. It is, in a sense, the Lupin version of Reichenbach Falls; that is, having grown tired of writing Lupin stories, LeBlanc decided to give his character a grand exit. It failed, of course.
Four years after the terrible tragedy of The Hollow Needle, an extraordinarily wealthy diamond dealer is robbed by Lupin. For Lupin, it was an ordinary theft, but the man is murdered in a way that implicates Lupin himself, with the only clues being a cigarette case with the initials, "L.M.", and a label with the number 813. Thus Lupin finds himself in a cat-and-mouse game with an extraordinarily dangerous foe, attempting to solve a mystery that gets deeper at every turn....
This is definitely a longer work than most of the other Lupin stories, and by every account, it is much darker. So we will see how it goes.
