Wednesday, October 2, 2013

"A Strain on One's Credulity"

THE RED ROOM.
By William Le Queux.
Little, Brown & Co.
1911. 294 pages. $1.50

This is the full review from THE LITERARY DIGEST (May 6, 1911), archived here:
Like all modern detective stories, this tale requires the greater part of the book in order to relate most startling, thrilling, and evidently impossible facts which the rest of the book only imperfectly explains.
It is a strain on one's credulity to see the murdered and mutilated bodies of a famous scientist and his daughter and then to hear of them traveling on the Continent, and finally to meet them.
Complications multiply with alarming rapidity, and the repetition of the question—"Who killed Professor Greer?" bears an onomatopoeic resemblance to "Who killed Cock Robin?" The resemblance jars on the reader.
The solution of the mysteries makes necessary some wonderful feats, but there is such a mass of weird and shivery facts that they do not all get cleared up in the final explanation.
To the lover of detective morbidity the story will make a strong appeal.
THE RED ROOM is also available on Project Gutenberg. The UNZ index lists 54 items for William Le Queux.

Category: Detective fiction

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