Delving deep into the heart of the Belle Époque's wealthy society, this book reconstructs the story of the man who inspired the evergreen character of the gentleman thief, Arsène Lupin.

As the grand hotels flourished in the laste 19th century, a new class of thieves appeared: "hotel rats." Cultured, polyglot, and dapper, they booked rooms and then spent their stays burgling their neighbors before leaving without looking back. Patrice Lajoye looks into the life of one of them, George Ostrowski, who inspired the famous character of gentleman thief Arsène Lupin. From scraps and fragments, Lajoye reconstructs the life of this criminal and man of many faces, convicted multiple times over the course of a more than forty-year career.