Detective-Inspector Gabriel Hanaud has been described as the "first major fiction police detective of the Twentieth Century". He was modelled on two real-life heads of the Paris S ret , Mac and Goron. mile Gaboriau's Monsieur Lecoq was also an acknowledged inspiration. Mason wanted to physically differentiate Hanaud from Sherlock Holmes as much as possible, and so he made him stout and broad-shouldered in contrast to Holmes who was thin. He often...