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Gaston Leroux (1868-1927) gave up a career as a lawyer to become a journalist in his mid twenties. Though today he is best known for his novel The Phantom of the Opera (1910) during his lifetime his fame rested on his detective novels, The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1908) and The Perfume of the Lady in Black(1909). Amongst the greatest novels of the golden age of crime fiction they introduced an eighteen year old journalist turned detective, Rouletabille, to the world. There are eight Rouletabille novels, all worthy of returning to print in English.So far only The Mystery of the Yellow Room and its sequel, The Perfume of the Lady in Black

My favourite of all locked-room novels has at last been reissued. The Mystery of the Yellow Room was written in 1908 by Gaston Leroux, better known for The Phantom of the Opera, and has never been bettered. The first in a series of novels to feature the intrepid if naive young reporter and sleuth, Rouletabille, it pits him against the dark soul of the detective Frederick Larsan and the murky secrets of the Stangerson family. Considering when the book was written, it remains remarkably modern, a page-turner whose exploration of the dark side can still send shivers up your back. Naturally, the solution to the central crime is a twist within a tortuous twist for which even a Mensa reader will be quite unprepared. A masterpiece.

The Mystery of the Yellow Room is published by Dedalus

Maxim Jakubowski, originally published in Time Out