Gaston Leroux (1868-1927) was a French journalist and detective fiction author. His contribution to French detective fiction is considered a parallel to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's in the United Kingdom and Edgar Allan Poe's in America. He's the author, among others of "The Phantom of the Opera"
"Le mystère de la chambre jaune" (The Mystery of the Yellow Room), published in 1907, is the first novel starring the journalist detective Joseph Rouletabille (although in the very first publication it was "Boitabille"). A woman has been attacked, almost killed in a locked room, with just a barred window, no chimney, and a single locked door... but there no trace of the "murderer" is found when the door is finally opened. From here we see how the young Rouletabille discovers by simple reasoning what's happening, while the rest of the characters struggle to understand how can people disappear or be in two places at the same time, how can dead a body be transformed into someone else... A classic of mystery literature.
There are several movies based on this book and, apparently, the original manuscript has been
recently found.
The text comes from Wikisource, but it has been proofread, corrected and formatted. Two maps have been re-drawn following as closely as possible the original (the quality of the scans was too poor to keep them).
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