The whodunit , The Mystery of the Yellow Room was written by Gaston Leroux in 1907, it was one of the first of this genre and still is one of the best , both John Dickson Carr and Agatha Christie heaped superlatives on it.

I have just finished reading it and the ending totally surprised me .

My blog friend Martine started my interest in the book by quoting a line from it ,which is seminal to the plot, as a response to a blog I put up about the presbytery and it’s garden.

Le presbytère n’a rien perdu de son charme, ni le jardin de son éclat

“The Presbytery has never lost its charm nor the garden its colours.”

This wonderfully enigmatic phrase runs as an unsolved moment through the book, only being revealed in the final pages.

As such it became championed by the surrealists in the twenties and became a sort of motto for them.
I confess it has now lodged itself in my brain and I think I must include it somewhere as a sort of house motto , maybe on the top of our billheads .

Leroux after wrote scores of detective novels , including his most successful , and most adapted ; The Phantom of the Opera .

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