What to read after “Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief” by Maurice Leblanc: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.
A. J. Raffles is a celebrated cricketer welcomed into London's best clubs, and by night a daring burglar. His friend Bunny Manders, drawn into the schemes, narrates a series of elegant robberies that mix careful planning with narrow escapes. Raffles steals from the wealthy, keeps his manners, and treats each job as a sport, while the pair dodge the growing danger of being caught.
Simon Templar, known as the Saint, lives by his own rules and targets men who have grown rich on crime. Charming and unbothered by the law, he arranges clever robberies and swindles that turn the tables on villains, sometimes leaving the money with their victims. Three adventures follow his schemes, his quick disguises and the police who would like to see him behind bars.
In the city of Vienne, the aristocrat Nicholas Valiarde plays the careless nobleman while secretly running a network of thieves. He is funding a long revenge against the man who ruined his family through a series of elegant heists. Then eerie deaths and a forbidden necromantic power interrupt his carefully built scheme, and Nicholas has to decide how far his deception and his private code will carry him.
Bernie Rhodenbarr is a polite, skilled burglar who never hurts anyone and only steals from people who can afford it. Hired to steal a small blue box from a Manhattan apartment, he is still there when the police arrive and a dead body is found in the bedroom. To clear his name he has to work out how the murder was done.
In a city of canals and thieves, Locke Lamora leads a small band of con artists who rob the nobility. A hidden power turns the tables, and the crew find themselves caught in a scheme far larger than any of their own.
Katarina Bishop has left her family's life of theft for a boarding school, but her father is accused of stealing five paintings from a dangerous collector. To save him, Kat assembles a crew of young thieves and plans a museum heist against a two-week deadline, with Interpol and a mobster close behind.
In 1855 a polished thief plans to steal a shipment of gold being carried by train from London toward the Crimea. He gathers a crew, copies the four keys to the safes and studies the timetable, while a police informant threatens to expose the scheme.
Michael Smith has not spoken since a violent event in his childhood. As a teenager he discovers he can open almost any lock, a talent that draws criminals who need a safecracker. His skill also brings him to Amelia, and protecting her pulls him into an elaborate con he cannot easily escape.
Slippery Jim diGriz is the galaxy's smoothest con man and thief, a well-mannered crook who talks his way through bank vaults and police cordons. Caught at last, he is offered a choice: work for the secret service he spent years outwitting, or face prison. His first assignment sends him after another criminal just as clever as himself, across worlds and space stations where every plan needs a quick rethink.
Nathaniel is a young apprentice magician who summons the djinni Bartimaeus to steal a powerful amulet from a politician. The djinni is clever, sarcastic and far from willing, and the theft sets off a fight that neither of them expected to survive.
A quiet Catholic priest with a mild manner and an eye for human nature solves impossible crimes that baffle the police. Across twelve stories he uncovers murderers, thieves and impostors, often relying on ordinary details that everyone else has overlooked.
Bernie Rhodenbarr, a bookstore owner who supports himself by burglary, is interrupted while robbing a Manhattan apartment and hides in a closet. When he emerges, the tenant is dead and his loot is gone. To clear himself and get the money back, he starts hunting the killer across the city.
A priceless yellow diamond looted from an Indian temple is left to Rachel Verinder on her birthday, and vanishes the same night. Family, servants, doctors and a famous detective each tell their part of the story as suspicion moves from one person to another.
Betrayed on the eve of his wedding and imprisoned for years, Edmond Dantès escapes with a fortune and returns under a new name. Patiently, he engineers the ruin of the men who stole his life.
Two orphaned brothers run away to Venice and fall in with a gang of street children led by the mysterious Thief Lord, who claims to be a master burglar. The children live in an abandoned cinema, stealing what they need and looking out for one another, until a strange commission and a magical carousel pull them into a bigger adventure than they expected.
Stan Carlisle works the carnival, watching the geek at the bottom of the show and vowing never to fall that low. Clever and ambitious, he moves from a mind-reading act to spiritualist con, fleecing the rich, until his own past catches up with him.
Eli Monpress is a wizard and a thief who would rather have a larger bounty than a heavier purse. To raise it he kidnaps a king, which brings the Spirit Court's envoy Miranda Lyonette after him. Eli's easy charm hides a plan that puts more than his own bounty at stake.
A woman walks into Sam Spade's San Francisco office with a story about a missing sister, and the case becomes a hunt for a jewel-encrusted black bird. Spade's partner is killed, and he must decide whom to trust among liars, thieves and double-crossers.
Robin Hood takes to Sherwood Forest as an outlaw after a clash with the law, and gathers a band of loyal companions around him. They rob the rich and the corrupt, help the poor, and match wits with the Sheriff of Nottingham. The tales follow their feasts, disguises, archery contests and fights against unjust rulers.
On their fifth wedding anniversary, Amy Dunne disappears from a rented house and her husband Nick becomes the prime suspect. Two narrators tell very different versions of the same marriage.
In late-Victorian London, a shopkeeper who is also a paid spy for a foreign power is ordered to carry out a bombing. The people around him, including his wife and her vulnerable brother, are pulled into the consequences of a plot he cannot control.
Insurance salesman Walter Huff is drawn to Phyllis, the alluring wife of a client, and agrees to help her kill her husband and make it look like an accident. Their scheme is carefully plotted, but the company's claims investigator begins to notice details that do not add up.
A drifter called Frank takes a job at a roadside diner and begins an affair with the owner's unhappy wife. Their plan to be together, a murder made to look like an accident, sets off a chain of events that neither of them can control.
At a country house party, the host's brother is found shot in a locked room and the host has vanished. Antony Gillingham, a guest with a taste for detective stories, and his friend Bill play at being Holmes and Watson, poking into the household's secrets before the police arrive.
What should I read after “Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief”?
Start with “The Amateur Cracksman”, “Enter the Saint”, “The Death of the Necromancer”: they are the closest to “Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief” in tropes and mood. Under each book in the list you will see what exactly it has in common.
How are similar books chosen?
We compare tropes (for “Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief” these are Gentleman Thief, Heist, Trickster), genre, plot, era and tone. It is not “readers also bought”; it is similarity in the content itself.
Are there recent books in this list?
Yes. Among the newer ones are “The Lies of Locke Lamora”, “Heist Society”, “The Lock Artist”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
