The Mystery of the Yellow Room
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The Mystery of the Yellow Room is a locked room mystery crime fiction novel written by Gaston Leroux, first published in France in 1908.
Leroux weaves the tale of a diabolically complex and seemingly diabolically perpetrated crime in which the criminal appears to disappear into thin air. Such is the mechanical and logistic complexity of the puzzle that Leroux is obliged to provide the reader with detailed and precise diagrams and floorplans illustrating the scene of the crime. Further impossible problems emerge as the story progresses towards a dramatic and sensational denouement. The emphasis is firmly on the intellectual challenge to the reader, who will be hard pressed to unravel every detail of the situation.
John Dickson Carr, the master of locked-room mystery, named this as the 'finest locked room tale ever written' in his 1935 masterpiece The Hollow Man.