Author: Gaston Leroux
Publisher: Dover Publications
Rating: WARTY!
This is an example of an adult historical novel that was actually contemporary when it was written, so it's a great novel to read to get a feel for the time and people's habits, clothing, and so on. It's also a great way to see how language has changed over time. Consider this phrase: "gay as a lark". 'Gay' was used more than once in this novel, and of course bears no relation whatsoever to the meaning which it most usually carries today.
This is supposed to be one of the quintessential locked-room mysteries, but I have to advise you that you're in for a boring read. It is really tedious, and the unnecessary secretiveness on the part of the journalist who is solving the crime is nothing short of tedious. It's really annoying and the novel had no need whatsoever to take up as much space as it did in incessant rambling and mindless drivel, such as the phrase, "...replied Madame Bernier—that was the name of the concierge—“ just a few lines - literally, after she had been introduced as the concierge.
Some small parts of this novel made no sense. I don't know if that was the translator's fault or what. I'm not going to give page numbers since this was on a Kindle app on my phone and I don't trust location numbers! Besides, who needs them when you have a search function? At one point, I read this: "...brandished in over my head a sort of mace." What? I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. I think maybe it was 'brandishing' instead of 'brandished in', which suggests that this was dictated rather than typed.
There are more of these than I want to catalog, like "...on the grass his grass!", but what intrigued me more was the consistent reference to the person who attacked Mademoiselle Stangerson as 'the murderer' when he had not murdered her. For example as in this exchange:
“And what do you think of the murder?”and in the line, "...enormous head-lines announcing the murder of Mademoiselle Stangerson...".
“Of the murder of poor Mademoiselle Stangerson?"
The French version uses the term l'assassin, which is translated as murderer for reasons unknown, but which is equally inaccurate.
Another weird thing was in the repeated use of the phrase: Bête du bon Dieu! which means literally 'beast of good god'. I have no idea what this meant. In some places it's explicitly used to represent a cat, but at other times I had no idea what they Leroux was talking about. Maybe it always meant the cat, but then why not translate the phrase. It means nothing otherwise.
The inverse of this is where a phrase simply wasn't translated such as in this case: "...poste restante letter...". Maybe that French phrase was in use in England at the time this was translated, but it seemed weird.
At another point I read the following, which is part of a supposed transcript of the questioning of Mademoiselle Stangerson after she recovered from her head wound, hence the initials Q and A:
Q. Excuse me, mademoiselle, if you will allow me, I will ask you some questions and you will answer them. That will fatigue you less than making a long recital.
A. Do so, monsieur.
Q. What did you do on that day? - I want you to be as minute and precise as possible.
So immediately after he announces that he doesn't want to fatigue her by having her recite long answers, he demands that she recite a long, detailed answer! Poorly written.
Here's a choice snippet"
“Do you often eat here?”He sometimes eats there often?
“Sometimes.”
So in short, I can't recommend this. Had it been written better, and subsequently translated better, it would have made a difference, but what this book needs is a really ruthless editor to turn it into a short story which is all it merits once the padding is removed.
