While truth always gets blurry around Vidocq, it's pretty clear his investigation methods, very transgressive since melding with criminals was just something you wouldn't do, just popped a societal barrier. But the funniest about him is that the lifetime of telling credible stories to escape awry situation not only made him a fun story teller, but celebrity pushed him to also tailor his stories in some kind of PR narrative.

Even some books editions goes in length telling you that there were printed and untampered in belgium, implying that some other would be to protect unspecified interests. This kind of victimisation and implied persecution should feel familiar nowadays. The fun part is that it's hard to know if it is legit or not, well like anything that comes from Vidocq.

So, I'm not mistaken, the guy, as crook as he were, if not the inventor, was at least an immense source of inspiration for:

- modern investigation with groomed informants, forensics and penetration (key forging)

- true crime stories

- PR narrative & salvaging reputation

clive james wrote quite a funny article about the guy: https://archive.clivejames.com/books/vidocq.htm

It is pretty funny, and thank you for bringing Clive James to my attention :)

Obligatory reference to the movie https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0164961/

I quite enjoyed that movie, although the relation with Vidocq was a bit tangential. The tv series with Claude Brasseur had a bit more material :)

Vidocq is a character in the awesome Sandman Slim books. Gets a bit of the backstory with some supernatural elements thrown in, good stuff.