A young naval officer is ordered to sea just as his fiancée's father, the rich Count de Ville-Handry, falls into the hands of the adventuress Sarah Brandon and her associates — a circle of respectable-looking people who have agreed to ruin whoever stands in their way. Gaboriau was a cavalry trooper and a lawyer's clerk before he invented Monsieur Lecoq and, with him, the French detective novel; here the conspiracy is the villain, and it has better lawyers than the hero. Fifty-six plates track the novel's turn from Daumier's Paris to open water, where Gudin and Monet give the sea the menace the conspirators keep on land.
