Gaston Leroux 
Les étranges noces de Rouletabille 

Si Rouletabille s’est jeté avec ses amis dans la gueule du loup, autrement dit le repaire du terrible Gaulow, c’est parce qu’il adore Ivana Vilitchkov et qu’il a voulu la tirer des griffes de ce bandit, assassin de toute sa famille. Il s’est battu comme un lion, a risqué cent fois sa vie, délivré Ivana, capturé son ravisseur et pour quel résultat? Au moment même où arrivent les renforts conduits par Athanase Khetew, cousin d’Ivana, elle a fait évader Gaulow.

Pourquoi? Et pourquoi encore éprouve-t-elle tant de chagrin quand Athanase, un peu plus tard, abat Gaulow d’un coup de sabre? La première réponse qui s’impose à Rouletabille le désespère. Son bon sens lui en dicte une seconde qui le lance à bride abattue dans une folle chevauchée à travers les Balkans en guerre et l’amène à Constantinople sur les rives du Bosphore aux mystérieuses eaux profondes où se joue le sort de ses étranges noces, mais c’est en France que s’achèvera l’aventure extraordinaire commencée dans Le Château noir.

Giới thiệu về tác giả

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.