The Mystery of the Yellow Room "remains, after a generation of imitation, the most brilliant of
all 'locked room' novels."Howard Haycraft, author of Murder for Pleasure, a history of detective fiction

The Mystery of the Yellow Room is a classic of detective fiction, a tour de force on the "least-likely-person"
theme that revolutionized the genre in its time.

At the heart of this novel is an enigma: how can a murder take place in a locked room that shows no sign of having being
entered? Two characters rise to the occasion of the mysteryone, a renowned detective, and one, an upstart young
reporter, who will scandalize Paris by suggesting that the detective is mistaken. In a suspenseful climax, Joseph
Rouletabille recounts for the court, with the meticulous logic of a Sherlock Holmes, his own interpretation of the murder
attempts on the beautiful but secretive Mlle. Stangerson. Told through the eyes of Rouletabille's older and somewhat
skeptical sidekick, The Mystery of the Yellow Room withholds to the very end the revelation of who is the story's
heroand who its villain.

Gaston Leroux (1868-1927), French novelist, was born in Paris. He earned a law degree in 1889 but turned to journalism in his mid twenties and later sailed the world as a correspondent, reporting on the Russian Revolution of 1905. In the early 1900s, he began writing novels and became best known for The Phantom of the Opera (1910). His novel The Mystery in the Yellow Room sparked the development of detective fiction as a genre.