The Gilded Cliqueby Emile Gaboriau. The Pearson Publishing Company, n.d. (but probably some time between 1900 and 1920). Hardback, 394 pp. Blue cloth boards very grubby, title and authors surname in faded gilt lettering on the spine. Pages tanned. Binding intact and clean throughout. Condition: Fair £14.99 Gaboriau is remembered as the first French writer of detective fiction. The hero of those ground-breaking novels is one Monsieur Lecocq, a character admired by Conan Doyle, but disparaged by Holmes; nevertheless inThe Gilded Clique(first published as La Clique dorée in 1871), he fails to put in an appearance, even though this too is a murder mystery, jam-packed with the kind of thrilling sensation that readers in the Victorian age so relished. (Gaboriau is a kind of French version of Wilkie Collins.) This would interest anyone who enjoys nineteenth century French fiction in translation, and who feels that there exists a gap on the library bookshelves where so once famous