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Eugène-François Vidocq was the real-life Paris detective who inspired Sherlock Holmes, Edgar Allen Poe’s Dupin and Maurice Lablanc’s Lupin stories.

He revolutionised criminology: developing undercover techniques, using science and surveillance to bring Paris’s crimewave under control and setting up a system of card indexes which would be used for well over a century.

The department he created - the Sûreté - was the forerunner of both Scotland Yard and the FBI.

But who was this almost mythical man? And where does the truth stop and the fiction - which he helped create - begin?

James Morton wrote the entertaining ‘The First Detective: The life and revolutionary times of Eugène-François Vidocq.’ (Link to USA site.)

In this episode - a special bonus for paid subscribers - Morton describes how Vidocq moved from being a criminal himself to setting up one of the world’s most influential crime fighting organisations while inspiring history’s most celebrated fictional detectives.