Résumé
Résumé de L’Aiguille creuse
À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
You will enjoy this if you like clever detectives, daring thieves and codes that yield to careful reasoning. It suits readers who love French history, hidden treasure and a duel of minds, with a touch of romance.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
The Hollow Needle is an Arsène Lupin novel by Maurice Leblanc, a French writer who made the gentleman burglar one of the best-loved rogues in crime fiction. It follows a night of murder and theft at a Norman château, and then a duel of wits between a master thief and a seventeen-year-old schoolboy.
The boy is Isidore Beautrelet, a sixth-form student who spends his Easter holidays playing at detective and ends up outthinking the police. Against him stands Lupin, who always seems to have planned one step further ahead. Along the way you meet the examining magistrate, the dogged Inspector Ganimard, the English detective Holmlock Shears, and a young woman who fires the shot that starts everything.
The book gives you disguises, kidnappings, coded papers, a hidden chapel and a secret said to run through the history of France. It also gives you a thief with feelings. Let us begin with the night at Ambrumésy, where a girl hears a noise below her window.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A night of shots at AmbrumésyFree
- 2A false beard and a sharp mind
- 3Reasoning that names Arsène Lupin
- 4The chapel, the crypt and the Hollow Needle
- 5Face to face with Lupin
- 6The castle on the Creuse
- 7A secret passed from king to king
- 8Following the legend to the sea
- 9Open, sesame
- 10What the story says about its people
Point clé 1 sur 10
A night of shots at Ambrumésy
The story opens in the small hours at the Château d'Ambrumésy in Normandy. Raymonde de Saint-Véran hears noises below her window, and her cousin Suzanne calls to her from the next room. From the window they see two men crossing the park with bundles, and a ladder against the balcony.
The girls hear a struggle and a groan. Raymonde runs down to the drawing room, where a man with a lantern calmly bows to them and leaves. In the boudoir lie her uncle, the Comte de Gesvres, and his secretary, Jean Daval. Daval has been stabbed.
Raymonde takes a gun from the wall and shoots the man as he flees across the ruins of the old abbey. He falls, gets up and falls again. The servants guard every exit, yet when they search the cloisters they find only a soft yellow chauffeur's cap.
The case is already strange. A burglary has happened, yet nothing seems to be missing, and a wounded man has vanished from a small walled space.
That’s 1 of 10 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
- Nothing to pay today · Renews every year
- We email you before you pay
- Cancel online in two clicks
Questions about L’Aiguille creuse
What is The Hollow Needle about?
It follows Isidore Beautrelet, a schoolboy detective, as he investigates a murder and strange theft at a Norman château. His hunt for Arsène Lupin leads to a coded paper and a secret treasure said to have been guarded by French kings.
What is the Hollow Needle in the book?
It is the key to a centuries-old royal secret. The name appears in a coded paper that Beautrelet decodes as the words aiguille creuse, meaning hollow needle, and the whole chase is about what those words mean.
Who is Isidore Beautrelet?
He is a seventeen-year-old sixth-form student at the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly who is nicknamed the rival of Holmlock Shears. He solves crimes by reasoning from the facts in newspapers, then uses the same method against Lupin.
Do I need to read other Arsène Lupin books first?
No. The story stands on its own and explains who Lupin is as it goes. Familiar faces such as Ganimard and Holmlock Shears appear, but you can enjoy the book without knowing earlier adventures.
Is The Hollow Needle a true story?
No, it is a work of fiction by Maurice Leblanc. It does use real places such as Étretat and real figures from French history, like Marie Antoinette and Louis XIV, as part of its invented legend.