Émile Gaboriau in Jonzac (17), Charente-Maritime (17)

Émile Gaboriau had a number of jobs before becoming Paul Féval's secretary, from whom he learned the art of journalism. His best known work as a novelelist is L'Affaire Lerouge (1865), where the police inspector Lecoq appears, and Gaboriau is generally considered to be the father of the detective story. He was influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, and in turn influenced Arthur Conan Doyle. His health was fragile and he died of a lung infection at the age of forty. His father Charles Gabriel Émile Gaboriau retired to Jonzac, where Émile is buried with him and his mother Stéphanie (née Magistel). Jonzac appears under the name 'Sauveterre' in Émile Gaboriau's work.

Émile Gaboriau and Saujon, Charente-Maritime (17), France

Émile Gaboriau (1832-73) was born in Saujon, and is regarded as the first detective story writer. A great fan of Edgar Allan Poe, Gaboriau - who was a journalist with trials and morgues - transformed ideas behind Poe's stories into popular detective fiction. His first novel in this genre was L'Affaire Lerouge (1866), which first introduced his famous character Monsieur Lecoq, who was modeled on Eugène François Vidocq (1775-1857), a former thief who became a police officer, and who wrote the semi-fictional Les Vrais Mémoires de Vidocq.

The young Arthur Conan Doyle was one of the writers initially influenced by Gaboriau, although he took Poe's Dupin more as a model when he became a writer.

Although there is (surprisingly?) no monument to Gaboriau in Saujon, a street is named after him, but even then, it sounds slightly snooty to refer to him as a 'popular novelist'. As opposed to a serious one?