Extra: Of Crime and Yellow Rooms

As the blog has focused this week on Mary Roberts Rinehart's The Yellow Room, I think it's only fair to bring up another classic mystery set in another such room.

Gaston Leroux wrote The Mystery of the Yellow Room in 1907, making it more than a century old, yet it still remains a fine example of the locked room/impossible crime genre. A young woman is attacked in a locked room. The door is locked on the inside, and it is under constant observation; the only window is barred and impassible. The victim's screams and cries are heard. But when the door is broken down and the room entered, the victim – unconscious, but not dead – is alone in the room. Her assailant apparently has left a hat behind, along with a large mutton bone, the apparent weapon. And a gun has been fired and, it would appear, the assailant must have been injured. But there is nobody in the room.

The master of the locked room mystery, John Dickson Carr, called The Mystery of the Yellow Room "the best detective tale ever written." I don't know that I'd go that far, but it really is a first rate mystery. Here's a post I did about it a few years ago, here's a link to an audio review I did for the podcast, and here's a link to Amazon, where you'll find both an inexpensive Kindle edition and a paper edition. Or, given the age of the book, you can probably find a free public domain ebook at Project Gutenberg Australia.

Comments

[Margotkinberg.wordpress.com]

Les - I love it when those early stories that have inspired so many others get some notice. Thanks for sharing this one. Always so interesting to see the roots of the genre.

[Les Blatt]

The central mystery is very well done here, Margot. There are earlier locked room mysteries - most notably, I think, Israel Zangwill's "Big Bow Mystery" from 1892, but really going all the way back to Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue." But, as you know, the genre really is one of my favorites, and I enjoy them from just about any age.

[D]

Just ordered the Kindle version on your say/so, Les. :)
I read off my computer screen which is something I'm not all that enthusiastic about, but I must admit you can't beat the prices on vintage.

[Les Blatt]

I'm not thrilled by reading on my computer screen either, D - I did get a Kindle for that reason. I'm delighted that more vintage mysteries (and the backlists of newer authors, too!) are turning up in e-book format. I can't see a downside to that for authors and publishers, not to mention the benefits to readers.