Collin, Filip. Filip Collin was created by “Frank Heller,” the pseudonym of Martin Gunnar Serner (Dr. Zimmertür), and appeared in a number of short stories and fourteen novels from 1914 to 1936, beginning with Herr Collins Affärer i London; he appeared in five German and Swedish films between 1923 and 1943. Filip Collin is a Lupin. He is a heroic thief known as the “Continental Raffles.” He was born in Sweden and was an academic at the University in Lund, but he was exiled from Sweden for his crimes and works in Europe under the alias of “Professor Pelotard.” Collin is intelligent, logical, and a more than capable detective when he puts his mind to it. But he often declines to involve himself in matters which do not interest him. He is a bon vivant and flâneur and refuses to take anything seriously, including himself. Collin is eternally and fruitlessly pursued by Detective Kenyon.
Very popular in Europe, Filip Collin, but he never made the leap to America, no doubt because we already had Raffles and Arsene Lupin, not to mention the many American lifts of Lupin and Raffles. But during his heyday Collin was big.