This will be short and sweet. Fantomas is an engaging, entertaining, and rightfully classic read. Interesting characters, lots of plot twists, and old-fashioned drama. If you like melodramatic mysteries, this is one (of several in the series) not to be missed. ( )

Particularly enjoyable because of how stereotypical the book starts out. "Of course nobody could have possibly killed the woman for these ten reasons, and she was always so careful not to be killed". But persevere through that and the story goes in many interesting and novel directions.

The book is available for free even in English presumably as public domain. However, the translation is hard to bear as the translator insisted on using stereotypical British words like chap, egad, and so on liberally throughout the book.

Next time I'd pay for a better translation. ( )

Crime story about man who is master of disguise. So mysterious that by end i still wasn't sure what his plan was, which is a bit too mysterious. Overall not bad though. ( )

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Every now and then on the 1001 Books list, a novel comes along which is a complete walk in the park, takes absolutely no effort to read and is over before you know it. Fantômas is just such a novel.

Written jointly by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, who often wrote separate chapters independently before weaving them together, the Fantômas series of novels took France by storm about 100 years ago.

Based around the idea that a series of crimes are actually the work of one criminal mastermind, and a villain whose identity proves elusive to even the best detective in the land, you are constantly on the move from suspect, to crime scene, to aftermath … it’s hard to keep up with it all.

There are enough twists in this short novel that you are going to be caught out by at least one of them. However, Allain and Souvestre leave enough clues for anyone who likes figuring out whodunnits while at the same time ensuring that you know little enough to keep reading.

In fact, as the novel kicked off a series of over 40 books, you should definitely not expect a resolution at the end of this one. Far, far from it.

This is not beautifully crafted literature by any means, and it’s not the best crime fiction you’ll ever read either. But it was so widely read and so hugely influential in its native France that it is not surprising that such influence spilled over into other genres such as comic books.

As such, it’s worth a read in much the same way as you might read Tarzan, knowing that it was the beginning of something special for the world of written and filmed entertainment. ( )

This was supposed to be a farcical book in the vein of James Bond featuring Fantomas, a sinister master criminal. I didn't find anything amusing or interesting. I didn't even see the point of the book! I did not finish, reading only 48/254 pages. Life is too short to read lousy books! This is considered a classic by many, it is free on Kindle. It was very popular in England/France in the early 1900's with 11 novels in the series. There were also several films made (2 silent) featuring Fantomas. Not for me! ( )