"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 Féval, 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.