The Triumphs of Eugène Valmont (1906) is a collection of lively, enjoyable stories about a French detective resident in London.

Whether dealing with a gang of anarchists in ‘The Siamese Twin of a Bomb-Thrower’ or flirting with the supernatural in ‘The Ghost with the Club-Foot’, the resourceful M. Valmont rarely loses his sang-froid and self-confidence. He may not always catch the criminal but his sense of style and Poirot-like conceit remain intact.

Valmont is one of the most successful of the Edwardian era’s many rivals to Sherlock Holmes. His cases do not demand feats of Sherlockian deduction but the wit and energy with which Robert Barr tells them mean that the assorted triumphs of Eugene Valmont will continue to delight readers in the twenty-first century.