The second book in Gaston Leroux's series featuring journalist Joseph Rouletabille has some similarities to the first book, The Mystery of the Yellow Room, in that it too is a locked-room story (but the "room" is an entire fortress). I found it, like the first book, a little on the slow side, but this volume included much about Rouletabille's early history. ( )

Please don't read this review if you have not read "The Mystery of the Yellow Room".

I got this via the Kindle, but it is not showing up on Goodreads except as a paperback book. I should have maybe passed this by once the introduction even said that this book was not as great as The Mystery of the Yellow Room. We have a sequel to that book with characters we have already met from the previous book.

Joseph Rouletabille and Sanclair are back. It has been two years since Rouletabille has solved "The Mystery of the Yellow Room." Now both men are present at the marriage of Mathilde Stangerson and Robert Darzac. They have put the past behind them and both feel comfortable getting married now that the person who was behind the events from "The Mystery of the Yellow Room" is now dead.

So as a reader we get a huge reveal regarding Rouletabille and his connections to some of the characters. I really found that hard to be believed. I still struggled on to keep reading, even after the author put himself in the novel and had him meet Rouletabille. But I threw in the towel when I got to the author trying to describe where everyone was headed and the multiple ways in and out of the place and none of it made any sense. Frankly the whole book premise didn't make sense. I totally skipped to the end just to see how it ended and thanked goodness that I did not force myself to keep reading. There is too much information in this one and not enough dialogue. We have Sanclair just telling us the readers everything. And Rouletabille feels like a totally different person in this one. I can see why this book was not well thought of by people. I know that there were subsequent mysteries starring Rouletabille, but I am going to pass on them. ( )

The Perfume of the Lady in Black is Gaston Leroux's second book focusing on the brilliant young reported Joseph Rouletabille who made his first appearance in The Mystery of the Yellow Room. I read that book because it was mentioned somewhere as one of the first locked-room mysteries, a genre that I love, and one that didn't depend on the existence of a secret passageway or some other such trickery. The Perfume of the Lady in Black--which is effectively a "locked fortress" mystery--delves deeper into Rouletabille's history with the mysterious title character and reunites many of the characters from the first book for the second round of a battle with a villain who was presumed dead. The story in this one asks the reader to accept some pretty outlandish notions, but I enjoyed it anyway and I am finding -- to my surprise -- that the melodramatic, all-seeing reporter is growing on me. The next book, which I believe is the last, supposedly embroils Rouletabille in a conflict between the tsar of Russia and socialist revolutionaries, so that should be fun. ( )

Rouletabille ne m'a jamais inspirée comme personnage, donc ses aventures ne m'interpellent pas particulièrement. l'alternance entre un style ampoulé et une analyse mathématique rend la lecture fort déséquilibrée. L'émotivité excessive des personnages est aussi assez éprouvante.
L'histoire même est plutôt sympathique et fait très grand-guignolesque. Il est très marqué par son époque, au moment de émergence du genre. ( )