Gaston Leroux

Gaston Leroux (1868–1927) was a French journalist and novelist, born in Paris. He trained as a lawyer, inherited and squandered a fortune, and became a court reporter and then a foreign correspondent for Le Matin, covering the Russian revolution of 1905 among other events. In 1907 he turned to fiction and created the boy reporter-detective Joseph Rouletabille in The Mystery of the Yellow Room, one of the first and most ingenious locked-room mysteries, followed by The Perfume of the Lady in Black and The Secret of the Night. The Phantom of the Opera (1910) became his most famous work through its film and stage adaptations.