Mystery and Crime Leroux, Gaston: Le mystère de la chambre jaune. (French) v1 1 Jan 2009

[Jellby]

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).

All feedback is welcome.

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[zelda_pinwheel]

génial !!! thank you very much for this, jellby !! i first read this story in a very old, dusty, and falling-apart paperback (which i still have... but maybe not for much longer ) years ago, it will be nice to re-read it without the dust ! it is really a brilliant locked-room puzzle, i highly recommend it to anyone who likes mystery stories. thanks particularly for taking the trouble to redraw the maps, it's so frustrating when they are missing from ebooks.