Opening Passage:
It was close upon half-past six and the evening shadows were growing denser when two soldiers reached the little space, planted with trees, opposite the Musee Galliera, where the Rue de Chaillot and the Rue Pierre-Charron meet. One wore an infantryman's sky-blue great-coat; the other, a Senegalese, those clothes of undyed wool, with baggy breeches and a belted jacket, in which the Zouaves and the native African troops have been dressed since the war. One of them had lost his right leg, the other his left arm. (p. 1)
Summary: Patrice Belval and his Senegalese friend, known as Ya-Bon, help out a local nurse whom they have known for a short while, Coralie Bey, interfering with a plot to kidnap her. Patrice and Ya-Bon are both war heroes, Patrice having lost his right leg and Ya-Bon both his left arm and much of his power of speech (he is called Ya-Bon, because "ya, bon" is mostly all he can manage clearly to say with his injured throat). Coralie is the wife of Essares Bey, a banker of supposedly Egyptian extraction. Patrice and Ya-Bon, in their attempts to protect Coralie, find themselves in a series of events that lead to Essares Bey's murder, and a deepening series of mysteries resulting from it. The mysteries mount until Ya-Bon, who knows Arsene Lupin, having once saved the latter's life when the latter was in the Foreign Legion, connects Captain Belval and Lupin, and the mysteries finally begin to unravel.
This is a very unevenly developed book, I think; parts are very well done and parts seem to fall short of their promise. Ya-Bon is an engaging character who is underutilized in the story. There is an international mystery -- Essares Bey is part of a plot to drain gold out of France, and it is unclear who is behind it -- but it is greatly shortchanged. There is a domestic mystery -- despite having only met relatively recently, Patrice and Coralie find their names written down and linked together going back decades, and there ends up being a shared mystery involving their parents -- and this is mostly handled quite well. There is a mystery concerned with hidden gold, three hundred million francs worth (in 1915!), arising from the international plot, and this is also handled well, although perhaps too quickly and in a way that could possibly feel anticlimactic. I think part of the issue is that Patrice and Coralie, while charming, are not really strong enough characters to carry as much of the plot as they have to carry. Nonetheless, the twists and turns are mostly enjoyable.
In the Introduction, I suggested that Lupin being less visible here might benefit him as a character, and this was definitely the case. This is a much more likable Lupin than several of the more recent Lupin books have shown us, and his handling of the mysteries is quite masterful.
Favorite Passage:
They went nearer. There were bead wreaths laid down in rows on the tombstone. They counted nineteen, each bearing the date of one of the last nineteen years. Pushing them aside, they read the following inscription in gilt letters worn and soiled by the rain:
HERE LIE
PATRICE AND CORALIE,
BOTH OF WHOM WERE MURDERED
ON THE 14TH OF APRIL, 1895
REVENGE TO ME: I WILL REPAY.
Recommendation: Recommended; although it's somewhat uneven in execution, the twists are engaging and interesting.
*****
Maurice Leblanc, The Golden Triangle: The Return of Arsene Lupin, Fox Eye Publishing Ltd. (Leicester, UK: 2022).
