The world's first detective

Vidocq built the FBI's forerunner, he revolutionised policing with surveillance and science, he inspired Sherlock Holmes. Before... he was a criminal. Who was the world's first detective?

In 1822, the tall, beautiful Comtess Isabelle d’Arcy was found shot dead in her Paris home. She was much younger than her husband and had been having an affair. Police arrested the Comte, assuming he had pulled the trigger in a jealous rage.

Case closed, they thought. These were the days before ballistics. Forensics science was basic.

Enter Eugène-François Vidocq.

The detective had established France’s Sûreté, a large team of undercover officers who had spent the last decade cleaning up Paris’s dens of iniquity: Le Marais, Courtille and Montmartre.

One thing Vidocq knew was a criminal’s mind. Years before, he had been one.