The Mystery of a French Mystery Novel's Rapid Downward Spiral

Hello! Yesterday, I finished reading 813 by Maurice Leblanc, which was my next book to finish in the early 20th century French series (though I'm reading it in English) about the "gentleman thief" Arsene Lupin. I have a lot of enthusiasm for the series, partially because it's very entertaining and partially because Adult Swim used to show an anime, Lupin the III, which was very loosely based on the books, so my opinions on the novel are probably pretty biased. That's not to say that I've loved every one of the Arsene Lupin novels. The Hollow Needle in particular drove me up a wall, since I really disliked Beautrelet, the brilliant and remarkably cocky young detective on Lupin's trail, and I thought the last half of it was a little boring, too. 813, however, was a fast-paced, entertaining and enjoyable novel until about the last fourth of the book.

 I don't know what I could say about any of it without spoiling the whole thing, as spoiler alerts are very important to avoid with books that are nearly 100 years old, but during the last part of the book, I almost slammed my Kindle shut and shoved it back in my purse. My first problem with it was that, in the final stretch of the main story, there was a series of events that happened that, though it was perfectly logical, was so infuriating and depressing that it made me actively angry to read it. If that would have been the end of it, I would have been fine with the whole thing. After all of that happens, however, and a bit before it, too, there are so many false endings that it just gets to be sort of funny. I can think of at least four instances where the whole story could have ended, ready to go to the next book in the series, but Leblanc decided to keep going after each of them. By the time Lupin joins the French Foreign Legion (which is a spoiler, but not a very applicable one), I was not quite sure why the book hadn't ended.

Despite my complaints about the last part of 813, it was still an interesting book that I'd recommend with the same warning I posted above. If you'd like to read it, too, the full text can be downloaded in several formats from Project Gutenberg or as a Kindle book from Amazon.com.