The Mystery of the Yellow Room
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| The Mystery of the Yellow Room | |
 Cover of the 1908 first edition |
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| Author | Gaston Leroux |
|---|---|
| Original title | Le mystère de la chambre jaune |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Series | Joseph Rouletabille |
| Genre(s) | Mystery fiction |
| Publisher | L'Illustration (in serial) Editions Pierre Lafitte (book) |
| Publication date | 1907 in serial January 1908 in book form |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback), Audiobook |
| Pages | 236 (1998 paperback) |
| ISBN | ISBN NA (orig.) ISBN 1-873982-38-0 (1998 paperback) |
| Followed by | The Perfume of the Lady in Black |
The Mystery of the Yellow Room: Extraordinary Adventures of Joseph Rouletabille, Reporter (in French Le mystère de la chambre jaune) is one of the first locked room mystery crime fiction novels (such that a murder or other crime is apparently committed under impossible circumstances). It is written by Gaston Leroux, first published in France in the literary supplement of L'Illustration from September 1907 to November 1907, then as a one volume book in 1908.
It is the first novel starring fictional detective Joseph Rouletabille.
The story concerns a complex and seemingly impossible crime in which the criminal appears to disappear from a locked room. Such is the mechanical and logistic complexity of the puzzle that Leroux provides the reader with detailed and precise diagrams and floorplans illustrating the scene of the crime. Further impossible problems emerge as the story progresses towards a dramatic dénouement. The emphasis of the story is firmly on the intellectual challenge to the reader, who will almost certainly be hard pressed to unravel every detail of the situation.
John Dickson Carr, the master of locked-room mystery, has his detective Dr Gideon Fell declare this as the 'best detective tale ever written' in his 1935 novel The Hollow Man; it was voted the third best locked room mystery of all time[citation needed].
The novel finds its continuation in The Perfume of the Lady in Black where a number of the characters familiar from this story reappear.
Contents |
[edit] Plot introduction
The crime takes place at the Chateau du Glandier, located in the forest, near the road leading to Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois and Montlhéry. The daughter of a famous scientist is found the victim of attempted murder. The strange thing is the room is locked from the inside and there are no other ways in. A police detective is involved but the young journalist Joseph Rouletabille is more concerned with unraveling the mystery by use of reasoning and logic.
[edit] Plot summary
Miss Stangerson is found severely injured, attacked in a locked room at the Chateau. Joseph Rouletabille starts to discern that the crime is to be solved, if at all, by establishing motive and the reason for the locked room. At the end of the novel, clues stack up and the reader discovers that the criminal was actually the police detective, Frederic Larsan, who is really a notorious criminal, Ballmeyer. His victim (who does not actually die, despite the fact that the old American translation constantly describes the crime as murder) is found to have locked the room herself after the attack- but she is found to have excellent reasons for concealing the attacker and her true relationship to him, as he is her first husband, long thought to be dead. In a sequel The Perfume of the Lady in Black the reader also discovers that their son is none other than Joseph Roulettabille, who unmasked the identity of the criminal in the previous volume.
[edit] Characters in "The Mystery of the Yellow Room"
- Joseph Rouletabille – the young journalist and amateur detective, protagonist
- Frederic Larsan – the police detective, but really "Ballmeyer"
- Professor Stangerson – the scientist, owner of "Chateau du Glandier"
- Miss Stangerson – daughter of a famous scientist, the victim
- "Daddy" Jacques – an old servant in the Stangerson family
[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
- The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1919) at the Internet Movie Database
- Mystère de la chambre jaune, Le (1930) at the Internet Movie Database
- El misterio del cuarto amarillo (1947) at the Internet Movie Database
- Mystère de la chambre jaune, Le (1949) at the Internet Movie Database
- Mystère de la chambre jaune, Le (2003) at the Internet Movie Database
[edit] Release details
- 1907, France, L'illustration, Pub date ? September 1907—? November 1907, magazine serial (in French)
- 1908, France, Editions Jacques Lafitte (ISBN NA), Pub date ? ? 1908, hardback (First edition, in French)
- 1934, UK, Oxford University Press (ISBN 0-19-832345-X), Pub date ? December 1934, paperback (in French)
- 1977, UK, Dover Publications (ISBN 0-486-23460-6), Pub date ? April 1977, paperback
- 1978, UK, Remploy (ISBN 0-7066-0759-7), Pub date 25 August 1978, hardback
- 1996, USA, Books on Tape (ISBN 5-557-12771-2), Pub date ? January 1996, audio book (Cassette)
- 1996, USA, Buccaneer Books (ISBN 0-89966-141-6), Pub date ? June 1996, hardback (Library binding)
- 1997, UK, Dedalus Ltd (ISBN 1-873982-38-0), Pub date 10 August 1997, paperback
- 2002, USA, Indypublish.com (ISBN 1-4043-2003-2), Pub date 1 August 2002, paperback
- 2002, USA, Indypublish.com (ISBN 1-4043-2002-4), Pub date 1 August 2002, hardback
- 2004, UK, Thorndike Press (ISBN 0-7862-6991-X), Pub date 2 Nov 2004, hardback
- 2005, USA, Kessinger Publishing (ISBN 0-7661-9366-7), Pub date 1 April 2005, paperback
- 2006, UK, Blackstone Audiobooks (ISBN 0-7861-7523-0), Pub date ? April 2006, audio book (MP3 CD)
- 2006, UK, Dover Publications (ISBN 0-486-44928-9), Pub date 7 April 2006, paperback
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Mystery of the Yellow Room, available at Project Gutenberg.
- L'univers de Joseph Rouletabille (in French)
