The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux

I have no ambition to be an author. An author is always something of a romancer, and God knows, the mystery of The Yellow Room is quite full enough of real tragic horror to require no aid from literary effects.

Gaston Leroux, The Mystery of the Yellow Room

2017 is here, and I’ve kicked off a new year of reading with The Mystery of the Yellow Room. This early twentieth century novel is a classic locked-room mystery by Gaston Leroux. Leroux is probably best known as the author of The Phantom of the Opera, but he also wrote several mysteries featuring the reporter Joseph Rouletabille, including The Perfume of the Lady in Black and The Secret of the Night.

As you can see in this summary from the publisher, The Mystery of the Yellow Room has all the typical characteristics of an early twentieth-century mystery:

A frightful act of malice committed in Paris: the dastardly attempted assassination of the daughter of a famed scientist who was working late in his laboratory with an assistant when the attack took place in the adjacent room. A locked chamber, windows barred, no one hiding inside. The poor young lady unconscious, covered with blood, violent marks on her throat and a wound at her temple. The scientist’s revolver removed from its cabinet and sealed in the room with her. The only trace of her assailant is a large, bloody handprint on the wall.

At a loss, the chief of the Sûreté telegraphs for the famous detective Frédéric Larsan to be assigned to the seemingly unsolvable case. A genre-defining novel, The Mystery of the Yellow Room follows the investigation step by step, with thorough descriptions of the crime scene to allow the reader access to the same opaque clues to the crime that the detectives have.

Like a lot of early detective fiction, this story focuses more on the puzzle than on character development or theme, but the puzzle itself was enough to keep me reading. Leroux does a fine job, too, of creating a suspenseful atmosphere, and I enjoyed the voice of the narrator, Sainclair the lawyer. One of my favorite lines of the story is when he takes a jab at his profession:

I was helping to save the life of a woman, and even a lawyer may do that conscientiously.

The Mystery of the Yellow Room was chosen as the third best locked-room mystery of all time in a poll of mystery writers and reviewers, and for good reason. It’s well worth a read, especially for fans of early detective fiction and locked-room mysteries.

The Mystery of the Locked Room kicks off my 2017 reading challenges in a big way, satisfying six different challenges:

• it is the letter “M” in the Alphabet Soup challenge;
• it is the color yellow in the Color Coded challenge;
• it is the first book in the eBooks challenge;
• it represents France in the European challenge;
• it is the first in a chain of clues in the Follow the Clues mystery challenge;
• and finally, it is the first book on my Mount TBR challenge.

The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux
First edition Paris: Editions Pierre Lafitte, 1908
Kindle edition Open Road, 2014
Print length: 179 pages