Mystery of the a Yellow Room - Gaston Leroux

My mother in law hadn't got on with this book and didn't finish it so passed it to us to do as we wish (probably via Oxfam). A slim little novel of 212 pages it's a quick read so I settled down at the start of the Christmas break to have a go at it.

The author is more famously known for The Phantom Of The Opera but this is a crime novel complete with murder, a detective or two and lots of clues and red herrings. As he was born in 1869 it's an historical novel - he wrote it in 1907. I nearly wrote that its Edwardian but that would be wrong since it's set in France. According to the back of my copy Agatha Christie admired the book as a classic example of French detective fiction, and she is said to have been influenced by it. Leroux in turn admired Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allen Poe and modelled his detective on Sherlock Holmes and M Dupin respectively.

The hero detective character is said to be only 18 and as such lacks a little credibility, but it's not a bad story for that. It's quite a puzzle of a mystery and you wonder quite how it can be resolved, but it's very cleverness is part of its charm. It's relative shortness keeps up the interest as it rushes breathlessly to its conclusion.
Some twists and unexpected turns keeps you interested to the last page. And no I'm not going to tell you who did it..