I've been meaning to read Lupin so this new illustrated version gave me the perfect excuse! This volume contains the first nine stories of Arsene Lupin, one of the funniest gentleman thieves I've come across! To be honest one of the reasons I've not read this yet is because it was published in the early part of the twentieth century, so I expected it to be very longwinded. It surprisingly was not, quite the opposite actually, feeling very modern in both the dialogue and the narrative. Lupin's hijinks are absolutely hilarious and I can now see why Miyazaki choose to model his Lupin on this character.
The art in this is of course amazing. It's kinda why we are here right? You could get any copy of Lupin, really for just a few dollars used, but I don't believe it would be the same without these simple yet surprisingly detailed illustrations. They reminded me a bit of the art from Madeline or Amelia Bedelia, two of my favorite childhood books, and really that's what initially drew me to this book. And even as someone who literally watched Miyazaki's Lupin III like a week ago, I think Mallie's Lupin will be the one that is forever in my head.
Overall, I found Arsene Lupin, Gentleman Thief to be laugh-out-loud funny and while I'd say to go out and read it, I would definitely wait till you can purchase this version in June as the art in this new version makes these stories ten times better!
As always thanks to Netgalley and Diamond Book Distributors for the eArc, this review has been left voluntarily.
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