[HPforGrownups] Arsene Lupin

[Robert A. Rosenberg]

No: HPFGUIDX 157419

At 21:36 +0000 on 08/24/2006, potioncat wrote about [HPforGrownups] 
Arsene Lupin:

>One of Agatha Christie's favorite mystery series concerned Arsene
>Lupin, a French series. From what I can tell, Arsene is nothing like
>Remus. Is anyone familiar with that series? Opinions? Everything I
>know I found at Google.

Check Out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsene_Lupin. He is a 
Gentleman Thief of the Robin Hood, Green Hornet and Saint mold (ie: 
An "outlaw" who prayed on other outlaws and was in essence a "Good 
Guy"). He was created by Maurice Leblanc.

There is a long running Japanese Anime called Lupin III who is 
supposed to be Arsene Lupin's Grandson (similar to Brett "Green 
Hornet" Reid being the Grandson of Dan "The Lone Ranger's Brother" 
Reid).

>I'm guessing at the very least JKR may have been familiar with the
>character, or do you think she plucked the name out of her garden?

Lupin is French for "Wolf" and was Arsene Lupin's pseudonym (although 
I seem to remember in one of the stories his real name [or at least 
his original name before he assumed his Arsene Lupin identity] was 
revealed). His use of this name is similar to Don Diego de la Vega 
assuming an alter-ego/crime-fighting identity as [El] Zorro (Spanish 
for "[The] Fox"). JKR could have just gotten the name from its 
original source (ie: Fox) and it may not be a reference to Arsene 
Lupin.