The Black Coats

“Paris is like a forest in the New World where a score of savage tribes struggle for existence; each group lives on what it can get by hunting throughout society.” In The Parisian Jungle, Paul Feval, the father of the modern detective novel, turns Paris-the beating heart of civilization-into a dangerous jungle whose undergrowth shelters all manner of predators. The Parisian Jungle, written in 1863, is the first in a series of crime novels describing the exploits of the Black Coats, the world’s first international criminal organization. It anticipates novels, movies and TV series describing the adaptation of the Italian Mafia to 20th century Chicago and New York. The notion that crime fiction could be, and was destined to be, a literary genre emerges from The Black Coats.