Five more Rouletabille novels would follow. The topic introduced the character of Rouletabille, Leroux’s young, bullet-headed, rule-breaking journalist hero, and his Watson-like sidekick, Sainclair, both of whom returned in a less perfect but still intriguing second mystery with a most memorable title, The Perfume of the Lady in Black. In 1907 he published his first novel, The Mystery of the Yellow Room, considered by critics to be the most ingenious of the “locked room” mysteries, and a direct influence on the many variations to come (John Dickson Carr, in particular, owed a large portion of his oeuvre to this work of Leroux’s). Within the circles of European journalism in the late 1890s his exploits and scoops were legend. He grew up to become an adventurous news gatherer, roaming the danger zones of Europe and Africa. P lovecraft and Bram Stoker, and on at least one occasion he would create a story that would rank among the great mythic tales of romantic literature.Ī journalist before turning to fiction, Leroux was born in Paris in 1868. He could be equally dazzling in the Sherlock Holmes tradition of brainy mystery or with the sort of surreal horror practiced by H. Leroux, in a series of mysteries and thrillers, variously filled his fiction with clever puzzles, narrative surprises, bizarre sensationalism, and frightening thrills. A figure of great imagination and irrefutable cool, Gaston Leroux stands among the masters and chief architects of modern pulp fiction.
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