Gaston Leroux 
Rouletabille chez le tsar 

Au début de l’autre siècle, en Russie, de graves troubles secouent Moscou et Saint-Petersbourg. Des révoltes fomentées par des groupes nihilistes ou anarchistes sont mâtées dans le sang. Le général Trébassof est un des responsables de cette terrible répression. Il vient d’échapper par trois fois à de graves attentats (fusillades, machines infernales).

Le Tsar, inquiet pour un de ses plus loyaux serviteurs, suggère à Joseph Rouletabille, journaliste-détective dont la réputation n’est plus à faire, de se charger de l’organisation de sa sécurité. Il accepte et découvre une famille déboussolée mais recevant quand même beaucoup. La première mesure que prend Rouletabille consiste paradoxalement à éloigner l’important dispositif policier protégeant la propriété du général. Comment ce jeune homme astucieux pourra-t-il à lui seul empêcher que les terroristes parviennent à leurs fins ?

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Gaston Louis Alfred Leroux was a French journalist and author of detective fiction.

In the English-speaking world, he is best known for writing the novel The Phantom of the Opera (Le Fantôme de l’Opéra, 1910), which has been made into several film and stage productions of the same name, such as the 1925 film starring Lon Chaney, and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1986 musical. It was also the basis of the 1990 novel Phantom by Susan Kay.

Leroux went to school in Normandy and studied law in Paris, graduating in 1889. He inherited millions of francs and lived wildly until he nearly reached bankruptcy. Then in 1890, he began working as a court reporter and theater critic for L’Écho de Paris. His most important journalism came when he began working as an international correspondent for the Paris newspaper Le Matin. In 1905 he was present at and covered the Russian Revolution. Another case he was present at involved the investigation and deep coverage of an opera house in Paris, later to become a ballet house. The basement consisted of a cell that held prisoners in the Paris Commune, which were the rulers of Paris through much of the Franco-Prussian war.