Mystery
The Mystery of the Yellow Room
A young journalist takes on an impossible crime: an attack inside a room locked from the inside.
Five levels, about 80 languages
- A2ElementaryShort sentences and everyday words.
- B1IntermediateYou follow clear stories about familiar things.
- B2Upper intermediateLonger sentences, richer vocabulary.
- C1AdvancedClose to the original, lightly condensed.
- C2ProficientThe complete novel.
One purchase is one book, in one language, at one level: $4.99. Another level of a book you own is $1.99. Editions nobody has asked for yet are written on request: chapter 1 in a few minutes, the rest while you read. How the levels work.
About the book
Locked from the inside
At the Château du Glandier, outside Paris, the famous scientist Professor Stangerson and his daughter, Mathilde, work late in their laboratory. Mathilde goes into her bedroom, the Yellow Room, and locks and bolts the door. Moments later come cries of murder and a gunshot. When her father and a servant break the door down, they find her gravely hurt, and nobody else in the room. The window is barred, the door was locked, and there is no other way out. Joseph Rouletabille, an eighteen-year-old reporter, sets out to solve the puzzle, in rivalry with France’s most famous detective, Frédéric Larsan. Gaston Leroux, a former lawyer and crime reporter, published it in 1907.
Why it works for learners
This is a book about evidence, and evidence makes for clear writing: who was where, which door was locked, when the shot was fired. Leroux even includes floor plans. The vocabulary is spatial and precise (room, door, window, lock, bolt, corridor, floor, wall), and you’ll find small words like through, behind and under turning into clues. The narrator, Rouletabille’s lawyer friend Sainclair, reports his reasoning step by step. The rivalry between the young reporter and the great detective adds humor and pace.
Which level to start at
B1 works for the story. B2 is better if you want to follow the reasoning closely and play detective yourself, which is the real pleasure of the book. Sentence-by-sentence mode is useful for the key passages, where a single detail changes everything.
Read next
- The Phantom of the Opera, Leroux’s other famous novel
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, including “The Speckled Band”, another death in a locked room
- Tales of Mystery and Terror, with Poe’s detective, Dupin