An OK ending to a terrible book.

Un excellent roman comme le mystère de la chambre jaune

The big twist and reveal was not that surprising. This may be due to the fact that dozens of books have stolen the idea in the hundred-odd years it was first published.

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.

As a sequel to Mystery of the Yellow Room this one surprised me; it's less straightforward as a mystery, in fact I'd say part of the puzzle is figuring out what the mystery actually is, or which of the multiple questions that get brought up throughout the book actually matter. This "looseness" is also reflected in Rouletabille's actions and demeanor, whose usual genius is incapacitated by the very personal circumstances that surround the central events of the novel, which also casts Sinclair, his assistant, in more of a handler role and makes both of them feel like onlookers rather than active participants. By the time the explanations came, I honestly wasn't as invested in the mystery aspect and some of the usual satisfaction involved was lost on me.

La primera parte de esta serie, "El misterio del cuarto amarillo" me marcó por su versatilidad, la forma en la que los hechos se desarrollaron de una manera lógica y ordenada, y los personajes entrañables. El misterio, aunque fascinante, no marcaba tanto la pauta como el contexto en el que se desarrollaba.

Sin embargo, pasa lo contrario con "El Perfume de la Dama de Negro". Aunque el misterio es interesante, hay problemas de ejecución de escenas y de desarrollo de los personajes, donde todo parece superficial y demasiado explícito en su evidencia. El esquema de las acciones es un desastre que va de un lado a otro, también, además de profundizar en temas paralelos con demasiados detalles y apenas mencionar los que de verdad interesan.

Si consigo el resto de la saga, terminaré la serie de novelas, pero este segundo libro resultó una disminución de la calidad.