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“There is something epic about the Tour, and accessible to all at the same time, which makes it so unique,” said Philippe Gaboriau, a sociologist who has written a book about the race.

He seemed to have emerged from the ether, as Christie liked to tell it, though her careful reading of earlier detective-fiction greats — especially Émile Gaboriau’s Monsieur Lecoq novels — was no doubt a contributing factor.

He seemed to have emerged from the ether, as Christie liked to tell it, though her careful reading of earlier detective fiction greats — especially Émile Gaboriau’s Monsieur Lecoq novels — was no doubt a contributing factor.

Holmes's real-life model was Doyle's professor, hawk-eyed diagnostician Joseph Bell; writers from Émile Gaboriau to Edgar Allen Poe offered fictional prototypes.

By the 1880s, though, the genre was dominated by the newly translated works of French detective story pioneer Émile Gaboriau and by American dime novels featuring such masters of disguise as Old Sleuth.