Renowned in prison circles for his for his fast and effective escapes, Vidocq is something of a legend in Toulon jail, where he's serving yet another sentence. But once again, it only takes him a few weeks to find a way out. But while trying to lead a more peaceful life in the capital, he finds it harder to escape from his past, when he is wrongly accused of a crime he did not commit. In the eyes of both the police and the criminal underworld, Vidocq has become a marked man, so he sets about re-establishing the truth and cleansing his honour. In the process, he has no choice but to join forces with the Parisian police and in time becomes head of the brigade de sûreté, a group of ex-criminals tasked with infiltrating the city's murky underworld. Deploying methods much less conventional than the official forces of law and order, Vidocq and his men collar the crooks of Paris at an unrivalled rate. Successively delinquent, convict then policeman, Vidocq would go on to become father of the French police and founder of the first private detective agency in history.