Vidocq, Eugène François

Few people have had a life and a professional career to match that of the criminal, police officer, criminologist and master-of-disguise Eugène François Vidocq. And one can well ask whether anybody has written an autobiography with such great literary influence. He also features under his own name as well as rather obvious aliases in a number of books, and has been the subject of a lot of films, TV series, plays, comic-book series, etc. Vidocq’s own literary production is limited to a few autobiographical works and non-fiction books; but he is regarded as the founder of modern criminology. Modern police organisations and methods or combatting crime are to a considerable degree based on his original ideas, and he also started the first private detective agency in history.