The latter novel features a heroic albino who fights for justice in a Zorro-like disguise, one of the earliest treatments of a crimefighter with a secret identity.

The novel also features a Mafia-like criminal secret society called the Gentlemen of the Night, a theme that will become recurrent in Féval's oeuvre.

However, he was unhappy about his success as the author of adventure novels and soon tried to gain literary recognition with social satires such as Le Tueur de Tigres (1853), but in vain.

He returned to popular literature with more swashbucklers such as La Louve (1855) (a sequel to his earlier Le Loup Blanc) and L'Homme de Fer (1856).

Le Bossu has been the subject of half-a-dozen feature film adaptations and a number of sequels, written by Féval's son.

In it, Scotland Yard Chief Superintendent Gregory Temple is mystified by the actions of a supremely gifted crime leader who hides behind the identity of John Devil.

In 1863, Féval embarked on his masterpiece, Les Habits Noirs, a sprawling criminal saga written over a twelve-year period, comprising seven novels.

By its methods, themes and characters, Les Habits Noirs is the precursor of today's conspiracy and organized crime novels.

In 1865, Féval also wrote La Vampire, a seminal text featuring the perversely charismatic Countess Addhema, the first and foremost prototype of the female vampire-as-libido-run-wild theme.

In 1875, a few months after finishing La Bande Cadet, the seventh volume in the Habits Noirs series, Féval lost nearly all his fortune–the staggering sum of 800,000 francs–several million dollars by today's reckoning–in a financial scandal linked to the Ottoman Empire.

He also began writing religious-themed novels such as La Première Aventure de Corentin Quimper (1876) and Pierre Blot (1877).