Mesrine repeatedly escaped from prison and made international headlines during a final period as a fugitive when his exploits included trying to kidnap the judge who had previously sentenced him.

His parents had great aspirations for their son and sent him to the prestigious Catholic Collège de Juilly where his friends included the likes of musician and composer Jean-Jacques Debout.

After being released, Mesrine made an effort to reform: he worked at an architectural design company where he constructed models, showing considerable ability.

His family bought him the tenancy of a country restaurant, a role in which he was quite successful, but this arrangement ended after the owner paid a visit one evening to find Mesrine carousing with acquaintances from his past.

In February 1968, he fled to Quebec with his then mistress, Jeanne Schneider, and worked as a housekeeper/cook and a chauffeur for grocery and textile millionaire, Georges Deslauriers for a few months.

A couple of weeks later, on 16 July, Mesrine and Schneider were arrested in Texarkana, Arkansas on information supplied by an accomplice and extradited to Quebec.

Deeply resenting the way he had been treated in the prison, Mesrine and Mercier made an extremely risky attempt to precipitate a mass break out from the maximum security block of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul on 3 September 1972.

The boldness of escaped convicts returning to attack a prison infuriated Canadian law enforcement; the escapade predictably led to a hugely increased effort to arrest the duo.

But the location, though three miles down a dirt track through the forest, was far from being truly remote and the noise of them blasting away at targets all afternoon could be heard in the town of Plessisville where there was a Ministry of Natural Resources and Wildlife station.

The rangers were armed but their jobs had mainly involved enforcing hunting and firearms regulations, and in any case, there was no reason for them to expect that the men who had been making themselves conspicuous by such a disturbance would actually be wanted escapees.

[3] Mesrine continued robbing banks in Montreal, and even covertly gained access into the US again for a brief stay at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City, before moving to Caracas, Venezuela.

In May, he was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment – which, considering his record, was lenient for the time and place – to be served at La Santé maximum security prison where escape was thought to be impossible.

In a plan likely formulated even before his arrest, Mesrine took a judge, who sentenced him on another matter in the past, hostage with a revolver (recovered from the courthouse lavatory where it had been hidden by an accomplice) and escaped.

Mesrine was returned to La Santé where he covertly wrote and smuggled out an autobiography, titled L'Instinct de Mort ("Death Instinct"),[4][5] in which he claimed to have committed upwards of forty murders, a number thought by some to be a considerable exaggeration.

The appearance of Mesrine's book resulted in France passing a "Son of Sam law", designed to stop criminals profiting from the publication of their crimes.

On 8 May 1978, he produced a gun, stole keys and, with François Besse (a highly accomplished escaper in his own right), and another man, Mesrine got out of a cellblock and into a fenced-off yard walkway.

Mesrine and Besse eluded the subsequent massive sweep of the area by taking a farmer and his family hostage and forcing him to drive them to safety.

Moreover, he was adept at disguising his appearance and allaying suspicion from members of the public: he reportedly went for a drink with his neighbours and laughed when one said he "looked like Mesrine".

On 21 June 1979, Mesrine kidnapped millionaire real estate mogul Henri Lelièvre and received a ransom of six million francs.

Eventually, by using information supplied by Tillier, they ascertained the licence number of the car that a woman named Sylvia Jeanjacquot, believed to be Mesrine's mistress, had used and checked parking tickets which it had received months previously.

Undercover patrols combed the area and a man fitting Mesrine's description was spotted walking with a woman believed to be Jeanjacquot on 31 October 1979.

Mesrine and Jeanjacquot had reached Porte de Clignancourt on the outskirts of Paris, when the gold BMW 520 they were driving was boxed in at the entrance to a junction.

[1] By law, Mesrine could not profit from L'instinct de Mort, but the publishers had received a threatening letter from him in 1979 demanding payment nonetheless.

It was determined that he had been shot dead two days earlier, with the bullet wounds forming a square: a traditional underworld sign for a contract that has not been fulfilled.

Hard rock ensemble Trust dedicated two tracks ("Le Mitard" and "Instinct de Mort") to Mesrine on their 1980 album Repression.

Essay appeared as review of Carey Schofield, Mesrine, The Life and Death of a Supercrook (Penguin) in the Times Literary Supplement, May 1980.