Review: The Mystery of the Yellow Room

The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The last time I saw something this French it had half a pound of butter in it.

French mysteries feel quite different from English mysteries. Where English mysteries are soaked in a consciousness of class and frequently proceed at a leisurely pace, with maybe a gentle and shy romance as a subplot that doesn't really affect the main plot, French mysteries are dramatic! and suspenseful!! and full of love affairs that are mostly unwise, unhappy, ill-advised, illicit, intense, and essential to the story.

This classic from the very early 20th century (set some years earlier, so there are no motorcars or telephones mentioned, and everything is still lit by gas or candles) feels very much like its close contemporary, Maurice Leblanc's stories of Arsene Lupin, and the respective authors probably read each other's books. I wonder if the young detective in one of the Lupin books, who Lupin mocks so mercilessly, was influenced by the young detective in Leroux?

The difference, of course, is that these Leroux books are from the point of view of the detective, not the criminal (though Lupin does eventually switch sides and become a detective). The detective in this case is an 18-year-old journalist, a brilliant youth who sets himself up to compete with a middle-aged professional detective from the Surete (please excuse my lack of accents). The criminal is eventually revealed as a Lupinesque swindler and master of disguise, who has hidden himself in plain sight in a very Purloined Letter way. The difference from Lupin is that Lupin would never assault a woman (or anyone else, usually, except in self-defence); he prefers to beat people in a battle of wits, where he is particularly well equipped.

This criminal murderously attacks the daughter and assistant of a prominent scientist, who, unusually for detective stories, survives, though badly wounded and traumatised. The interesting part is that, at the time the struggle was heard, she was in a locked room - that favourite of detective writers - and an assailant could not possibly have escaped unnoticed from it. Later, the same man disappears from the midst of several people who have him surrounded. Is this a case of the scientist's area of research, the discomposition of matter? (He's supposed to be a predecessor of the Curies; the science is all bunk, as was not uncommon in stories of the time, but it doesn't play any real role in the plot.)

People being unwilling to talk in order to protect their various secrets is a theme throughout, which hinders the resolution of the mystery. The narrator takes the Watson role, assisting the brilliant young detective without understanding anything he's doing until it's painstakingly explained to him. There's plenty of drama along the way, and the solution to the mystery is brilliant and, to me, not at all obvious; it's revealed in a courtroom scene that makes up in sensation what it probably lacks in realism. (I can't imagine even a late-19th-century French court that was trying a highly sensational case being so forgiving of shenanigans as this one.)

If the author has a fault, it's writing in long, complex sentences that take concentration to parse, but that's mainly a problem at the beginning; the prose settles down a bit more as it goes on. If you enjoy the Lupin stories, you will probably enjoy this, and vice versa.

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