The young lady had just retired to her room when sounds of a struggle ensue, and cries of "Murder!" and revolver shots ring out. When her locked door is finally broken down by her father and a servant, they find the woman on the floor, badly hurt and bleeding. No one else is in the room. There is no other exit except through a barred window. How did the attacker escape? First published in 1907, this intriguing and baffling tale is a classic of early 20th-century detective fiction. At the heart of the novel is a perplexing mystery: How could a crime take place in a locked room which shows no sign of being entered? Nearly a century after its initial publication, Leroux's landmark tale of foul play, deception, and unbridled ambition remains a blueprint for the detective novel genre. Written by the immortal author of The Phantom of the Opera, this atmospheric thriller is still a favorite of whodunit fans everywhere. "The finest locked room tale ever written." — John Dickson Carr, author of The Hollow Man.

In The Perfume of the Lady in Black, Joseph Rouletabille, the young journalist turned detective, is once more pitted against his arch-enemy Frédéric Larsan. The mysterious crime committed in the Square Tower challenges even Rouletabille's powers of logic and deduction. But this is also a novel which - through its implicit accommodation of recent developments in the new science of psychoanalysis, particularly Freud's notion of the Oedipus complex - was even further ahead of its time than The Mystery of the Yellow Room. Without The Perfume of the Lady in Black, novels such as Robert Bloch's Psycho (and Alfred Hitchcock's film adaptation) would hardly have been possible. "...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 intrpid if naive young reporter and sleuth, Rouletabille, it pits him against the dark soul of the detective Frédéric 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 a shiver 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 quiet unprepared. We must hope Dedalus follows up soon with the outrageously complex and heart-breaking The Perfume of he Lady in Black, a sequel which revisits Rouletabille's first case and mischievously casts a very different light on its resolution and motivations. A masterpiece." - Maxim Jakubowski in Time Out

Like The Mystery of the Yellow Room, The Secret of the Night is a Joseph Rouletabille mystery. In The Mystery of the Yellow Room fictional detective Rouletabille investigated a complex and seemingly impossible crime - in which the criminal appears to disappear from a locked room! There've been so many locked-room mysteries since that it's become a subgenre - but there are folks who believe Gaston Leroux invented the form. (We hate assertions like that. Have you noticed how often things turn out to have been invented by monks in the middle ages, or by prehistoric Chinamen, or seventeenth-century Englishmen? - Heavy sigh.) John Dickson Carr, the master of locked-room mystery, named The Mystery of the Yellow Room as the "finest locked room tale ever written" in his 1935 novel the Hollow Man.

poche. Broché. 414 pages.

Si Rouletabille s'est jeté avec ses amis dans la gueule du loup, autrement dit le repaire du terrible Gaulow, c'est parce qu'il adore Ivana Vilitchkov et qu'il a voulu la tirer des griffes de ce bandit, assassin de toute sa famille. Il s'est battu comme un lion, a risqué cent fois sa vie, délivré Ivana, capturé son ravisseur et pour quel résultat? Au moment même où arrivent les renforts conduits par Athanase Khetew, cousin d'Ivana, elle a fait évader Gaulow. Pourquoi? Et pourquoi encore éprouve-t-elle tant de chagrin quand Athanase, un peu plus tard, abat Gaulow d'un coup de sabre? La première réponse qui s'impose à Rouletabille le désespère. Son bon sens lui en dicte une seconde qui le lance à bride abattue dans une folle chevauchée à travers les Balkans en guerre et l'amène à Constantinople sur les rives du Bosphore aux mystérieuses eaux profondes où se joue le sort de ses étranges noces, mais c'est en France que s'achèvera l'aventure extraordinaire commencée dans Le Château noir.

In Rouletabille at Krupp's (1917), Gaston Leroux followed the template created by John Buchan in Greenmantle (1916), in which a heroic secret agent is conscripted to carry out an officially-sanctioned dangerous mission in enemy territory. Here, it's fearless investigative journalist Joseph Josephin, aka Rouletabille, who is sent into the heart of the Kaiser's armaments factories to destroy the gigantic German super-weapon Titania, capable of annihilating Paris itself in a single shot. The novel displays Leroux's fascination with, and talent for, the bizarre. As a reflection of the imaginative concerns of the French in 1917 and the revised policy of wartime propaganda that took full effect in that year, it has a stark specificity and punctiliousness that are unmatched.

Alors que Rouletabille et son épouse, la ravissante Ivana, se trouvent en villégiature à Deauville, la jeune femme est assassinée en même temps que son patron, le célèbre professeur Boulenger. L'attitude ambiguë des deux victimes, qui flirtaient ouvertement, amène rapidement la police à considérer Rouletabille comme le suspect numéro 1. Comment ce dernier parviendra-t-il à prouver son innocence ? Et surtout, en trouvera-t-il la force, alors qu'il souffre terriblement? Sa femme a été tuée et l'avait peut-être trahi... C'est à travers le regard de son ami Gaston Sainclair, qui a accepté d'être son avocat, que nous suivons les péripéties de cette enquête intense et atypique. Le Crime de Rouletabille est la huitième et avant-dernière aventure du célèbre reporter auquel Gaston Leroux consacra une série culte. Elle fait l'objet d'adaptations cinématographiques régulières.

Les périples de Rouletabille à travers la Camargue pour retrouver son amie Odette, qui s'est fait kidnapper par les bohémiens. Une histoire pleine de rebondissements où les intrigues se chevauchent et s'entrecroisent.

Qui est l'agresseur de la belle Mathilde Stangerson ? Et surtout, comment a t il pu s'échapper de la chambre jaune qui était fermée de l'intérieur ? Le jeune reporter Rouletabille va doubler les plus fins limiers en résolvant cette énigme... Avant de se lancer sur la piste du parfum de la dame en noir. Les deux plus célèbres aventures de Rouletabille en bande dessinée : le mystère de la chambre jaune et le parfum de la dame en noir, étaient devenues introuvables. Les voici enfin rééditées dans une nouvelle édition qui prolonge le suspense avec des énigmes inédites de Swysen et Duchâteau.