Gaston Leroux 
The Mystery of the Yellow Room 

The Mystery of the Yellow Room is a mystery novel written by French author Gaston Leroux. One of the first locked-room mystery novels, it was first published serially in France in the periodical L’Illustration from September 1907 to November 1907, then in 1908. It is the first novel starring fictional reporter Joseph Rouletabille and concerns a complex, and seemingly impossible, crime in which the criminal appears to disappear from a locked room. Leroux provides the reader with detailed, precise diagrams and floorplans illustrating the crime scene. In 1799, the Yellow Room was the most expensively furnished guest bedchamber in the house. The Yellow Room overlooked the Potomac River and was filled with a stately suite of carved mahogany furniture, draped in a vivid yellow damask, was a reminder of the Washingtons’ beginnings and English roots.