![]() ![]() The murderous attack on Mathilde Stangerson in her yellow-wallpapered bedroom while her father and trusted factotum are outside, the windows being barred and the door locked and yet no sign of her assailant save a bloody handprint when the door is broken in, unfolds at a rapid pace and has intrigues aplenty at its filigree’d edges. I’ve previously called this one of my fifteen favourite impossible crime novels, and in rereading it I think I’d now revise that opinion, but in a way that doesn’t alter my respect for it. But it would be folly to claim that age has not caught up with it and that this was in the same class as the genre’s genuine masterpieces of the 1930s. The focus on propelling the plot at a time when even those who were focussed on plot weren’t exactly propulsive is both admirable and impressive, and the creativity Leroux brings to a subgenre that would utilise the secret passage for another 60+ years is staggering. Can a book still be a masterpiece if it’s not brilliant? In the case of Gaston Leroux’s debut The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1907) - which plays up to and anticipates so many of the established and forthcoming trappings of detective fiction - I’d say yes. ![]()
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