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Collin, Filip. Filip Collin was created by "Frank Heller," the pseudonym of the Swedish author Martin Gunnar Serner (Dr. Zimmertür), and appeared in a number of 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.

* I've included the Filip Collin stories and novels in the Best of the Encyclopedia category because of their historical importance and because of the fun to be found in them. The Filip Collin stories were important because for almost thirty years they provided Northern European and Scandinavian readers with an archetypal Lupin whose works they could enjoy. That the first real Lupin--Arsene Lupin--was still present on the bookshelves of stores and libraries in significant numbers didn't matter to Martin Gunnar Serner's reading audience, who preferred Collin thanks to his homegrown status--he was a Swedish homeboy, not some nasty foreign nationality like French. There was also the fun aspect of the stories and novels; Martin Serner as much as any Lupin author reproduced the joie de vivre and lighthearted elements of Maurice Leblanc, making the Collin stories and novels particularly enjoyable. 

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