De minuit à sept heures - Maurice Leblanc

Eager to gain funding for a scientific research group she belongs to, the beautiful Nelly-Rose Destol, having nothing else to offer in a lottery – her dead father’s fortune lost in foreign investments - innocently puts herself forward as a prize. Much to her surprise and to the horror of a rich gentleman who wants to marry her, this unusual prize attracts wide and even international attention. It’s on the Polish border with Russia that the news comes to the attention of two adventurers. One of them, a Frenchman called Gérard, has recently taken great risks to recover certain treasures and even the child of an exiled Russian Countess with the only payment being the “favour” of the beautiful woman. Intrigued by Nelly-Rose’s offer, Gérard’s older Russian colleague Ivan Borotof, having lost the Countess and his cut of the reward to Gérard, is willing to give up five million for a similar conquest, offering it in exchange for a night alone with the young woman, between the hours of midnight and seven. Gérard however intends to go to Paris and claim the prize for himself.

Although De minuit à sept heures is not an Arsène Lupin adventure, there’s a lot of similarity in the playing out of this romantic, crime-thriller melodrama, the exploits of Gérard’s roguish Don Juan adventurer being of a dubious nature, but with a noble charm underneath. Similarly, it’s in the ambiguity of this position that the thrill of the story lies, the reader never knowing what lengths he’s prepared to go to. The crime may not be as convoluted with hidden treasures, secret passages and cunning disguises that you find in an Arsène Lupin adventure, but there’s very much the same sense of pace, tension, excitement and even twists here that you would expect from a Leblanc thriller.