Walking through Walls: The world’s first anti-hero rogue cop
Graham Robb, 18 March 2004
“Constables had been known to lie in wait in a burglar’s cupboard for 72 hours, only to be locked in by the burglar and almost starved to death. Vidocq was a genius by comparison . . . nothing was too inconvenient for him . . . in the cruel winter of 1812, he spent a night waist-deep in a pile of fermenting rubbish so that he could net the thief known as ‘L’Ecrevisse’ (’the Crayfish’) without freezing to death.”