Guardian Review

Fans of Tintin will be delighted by Joseph Rouletabille, a reporter and amateur detective who first appeared in print in France in 1908. Rouletabille is a charismatic young fellow with a head that resembles a tomato in both shape and hue, plus a genius for solving crime through the application of pure logic. The puzzle he faces in this, the first of seven outings, is the epitome of the locked room mystery: a woman has been brutally attacked within a barred chamber that contains no perpetrator, only a bloody handprint and the mark of giant boots on the floor. In the most famous of locked room tales, Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue , the murderer was a monkey. Here the solution is even more fiendishly complicated, requiring much brow-furrowing on the part of the young Rouletabille. Gaston Leroux is better known as the author of The Phantom of the Opera , but this rattling tale stands as testament to his years as a court reporter. The denouement is hardly likely, but Rouletabille's process of deduction is a delight, as is his bombastic dismissal of any dissenting points of view. Caption: article-Pbnonfic24.1 Fans of Tintin will be delighted by Joseph Rouletabille, a reporter and amateur detective who first appeared in print in France in 1908. Rouletabille is a charismatic young fellow with a head that resembles a tomato in both shape and hue, plus a genius for solving crime through the application of pure logic. - Olivia Laing.