SHORTLISTED FOR THE TELEGRAPH SPORTS BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR AWARD 2019 Monsieur X is a dazzling tale of glamour, riches, violence and ultimately tragedy. Patrice des Moutis was a handsome, charming and well-educated Frenchman with an aristocratic family, a respectable insurance business, and a warm welcome in the smartest Parisian salons. He was also a compulsive gambler and illegal bookie. Between the late 1950s and the early 1970s, Des Moutis made a daring attempt to beat the French state-run betting system. His success so alarmed the authorities that they repeatedly changed the rules of betting in an effort to stop him. And so a battle of wills began, all played out on the front pages of the daily newspapers as the general public willed Des Moutis on to ever greater triumphs. He remained one step ahead of the law until finally the government criminalised his activities, driving him into the arms of the underworld. Eventually the net began to close, high-profile characters found themselves the target of the state's investigation, and people began turning up dead...

Detective stories are a uniquely thrilling genre. You get to follow your curiosity by solving a puzzle alongside the sleuth, slowly unraveling a mystery until you find the truth. There are so many fantastic detective novels and stories that it's hard to choose a list of favorites, but we’ve done our best to identify the ones that have truly become staples of the crime fiction genre. In this article, we’ve compiled our list of the best detective books and mystery series of all time. Happy reading! Best Detective and Mystery Stories Let’s start with our picks for the best standalone detective stories. Many stories on this list are part of a series, but we’ve only included stories that you can enjoy on their own—either the first story in a series, or a later in a series that you don’t need to read in chronological order.

This is the first thorough investigation of the Brummer brothers’ remarkable career as dealers in antiques, curiosities and modernism in Paris and New York over six decades (1906-1964). A dozen specialists aggregate their expertise to explore extant dealer records and museum archives, parse the wide-ranging Brummer stock, and assess how objects were sourced, marketed, labelled, restored, and displayed. The research provides insights into emerging collecting fields as they crystallised, at the crossroads between market and museum. It questions the trope of the tastemaker; the translocation of material culture, and the dealers’ prolific relationships with illustrious collectors, curators, scholars, artists, and fellow dealers.