One of the defining novels of the entire crime genre, Gaston Leroux's The Mystery of the Yellow Room has inspired readers and writers including Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr, and is now republished in hardback in the Detective Club series with a brand new introduction.

 Breaking down her door in response to the sounds of a violent attack and a gunshot, Mademoiselle Stangerson's rescuers are appalled to find her dying on the floor, clubbed down by a large mutton bone. But in a room with a barred window and locked door, how could her assailant have entered and escaped undetected? While bewildered police officials from the Sûreté begin an exhaustive investigation, so too does a young newspaperman, Joseph Rouletabille, who will encounter more impossibilities before this case can be closed.

 The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux, best remembered today as the author of The Phantom of the Opera, has been deservedly praised for more than a century as a defining book in the 'impossible crime' genre, as readable now as when it first appeared in French in 1907.

 This Detective Club classic includes an introduction by John Curran, who discusses how the book impressed and influenced a young Agatha Christie, was lauded by genre giants including John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen and Julian Symons, and remains to this day one of the most effective and enjoyable locked room mysteries ever written.

The Mystery of the Yellow Room

From the Collins Crime Club archive, the third standalone novel by Freeman Wills Crofts, dubbed 'The King of Detective Story Writers'.

 Seymour Merriman's holiday in France comes to an abrupt halt when his motorcycle starts leaking petrol. Following a lorry to find fuel, he discovers that it belongs to an English company making timber pit-props for coal mines back home. His suspicions of illegal activity are aroused when he sees the exact same lorry with a different number plate - and confirmed later with the shocking discovery of a body. What began as amateur detective work ends up as a job for Inspector Willis of Scotland Yard, a job requiring tenacity, ingenuity and guile .

The Pit-Prop Syndicate

Written in reaction to what Bentley perceived as the sterility and artificiality of the detective fiction of his day, Trent's Last Case features Philip Trent, an all-too-human detective who not only falls in love with the chief suspect but reaches a brilliant conclusion that is totally wrong.

 Trent's Last Case begins when millionaire American financier Sigsbee Manderson is murdered while on holiday in England. A London newspaper sends Trent to investigate, and he is soon matching wits with Scotland Yard's Inspector Murth as they probe ever deeper in search of a solution to a mystery filled with odd, mysterious twists and turns.

 Called by Agatha Christie "one of the best detective stories ever written, " Trent's Last Case delights with its flesh-and-blood characters, its naturalness and easy humor, and its style, which, as Dorothy Sayers has noted, "ranges from a vividly coloured rhetoric to a delicate and ironical literary fancy."

Trent’s Last Case

THIS DETECTIVE STORY CLUB CLASSIC is introduced by Dr John Curran, who looks at how Anna Katherine Green was a pioneer who inspired a new generation of crime writers, in particular a young woman named Agatha Christie.

 When the retired merchant Horatio Leavenworth is found shot dead in his mansion library, suspicion falls on his nieces, Mary and Eleanore, who stand to inherit his vast fortune. Their lawyer, Everett Raymond, infatuated with one of the sisters, is determined that the official investigator, detective Ebenezer Gryce, widens the inquiry to less obvious suspects.

 The Leavenworth Case, the first detective novel written by a woman, immortalised its author Anna Katharine Green as 'The Mother of Detective Fiction'. Admired for her careful plotting and legal accuracy, the book enjoyed enormous success both in England and America, and was widely translated. It was republished by The Detective Story Club after Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, speaking at the 1928 Thanksgiving Day dinner of the American Society in London, remarked: 'An American woman, a successor of Poe, Anna K. Green, gave us The Leavenworth Case, which I still think one of the best detective stories ever written.'

The Leavenworth Case

The first in a new series of classic detective stories from the vaults of HarperCollins is the world's first locked-room mystery, a seemingly impossible crime story as powerful as any that have copied the scenario since.

 "The Detective Story Club", launched by Collins in 1929, was a clearing house for the best and most ingenious crime stories of the age, chosen by a select committee of experts. Now, almost 90 years later, these books are the classics of the Golden Age, republished at last with the same popular cover designs that appealed to their original readers.

 Originally published as The Big Bow Mystery in 1891, and re-published by the Detective Club to coincide with a new film version called 'The Perfect Crime', Israel Zangwill's novel invented the concept of the 'locked room mystery' and influenced almost every crime writer thereafter.

 'A man is murdered for no apparent reason. He has no enemies and there seemed to be no motive for anyone murdering him. No clues remained and the instrument with which the murder was committed could not be traced. The door of the room in which the body was discovered was locked and bolted on the inside, both windows were latched, and there was no trace of any intruder. The greatest detectives in the land were puzzled. Here indeed was the perfect crime, the work of a master mind. Can you solve the problem which baffled Scotland Yard for so long, until at last the missing link in the chain of evidence was revealed?'

 This new edition includes a brand new introduction by the Golden Age crime expert, Dr John Curran, author of 'Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks'.

The Perfect Crime - The Big Bow Mystery

Après la mort, en 2004, de la fille d'Agatha Christie, un véritable trésor a été mis au jour par John Curran à Greenway House, la demeure familiale du Devon : 73 carnets, griffonnés de l'écriture presque illisible de l'auteur, sur lesquels figuraient pêle-mêle des notes prises sur le coup de l'inspiration : listes de personnages, de mobiles de meurtre, scènes supprimées.... Et, parmi eux, les manuscrits de deux nouvelles inédites : L'incident de la balle du chien et La capture de Cerbère – la véritable dernière enquête d'Hercule Poirot. Pendant 4 ans, John Curran a déchiffré et classé cet héritage inestimable, dont la lecture éclaire d'un jour nouveau l'oeuvre et le personnage somme toute assez mystérieux de « Dame Agatha ».

Les Carnets Secrets d'Agatha Christie

The ultimate introductory guide to Agatha Christie and her detectives, including stories featuring Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, and Tommy & Tuppence.

 Ever wondered how Agatha Christie became the world's best-selling storyteller? Never read one even though you know someone who loves her? Too bewildered by the choice of books to know where to start? Then CLUES TO CHRISTIE could be the key that unlocks the door to a world of mystery, thrills and romance that has captivated readers from 9 to 90 for the last 90 years.

 With more than two billion book sales, Agatha Christie is the world's best-selling novelist, translated into more languages than Shakespeare. And with more than 100 books and plays to her name, and over 150 short stories, it is no surprise that one-third of all fiction readers have read an Agatha Christie, and millions have seen the films and TV series.

 This exclusive eBook sampler includes a specially written introduction by the award-winning author and world's foremost expert on Agatha Christie, John Curran. Together with other useful and enlightening material to help readers navigate the world of Agatha Christie, such as reading lists, suggestions on different ways to read the books, a Poison Primer, and an A to Z of characters, CLUES TO CHRISTIE also includes three specimen stories by the Queen of Crime, to introduce her world-famous detectives of Hercule Poirot, Jane Marple and Tommy & Tuppence Beresford, and to help you decide which Agatha Christie books you want to read next.

Clues to Christie - The Definitive Guide to Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot and all of Agatha Christie’s Mysteries

A fascinating exploration of the contents of Agatha Christie's 73 recently discovered notebooks, including illustrations, deleted extracts, and two unpublished Poirot stories.

Agatha Christie's secret notebooks ; fifty years of mysteries in the making

Comme beaucoup de films à la fin de 2008, ils ont frappé un mur de financement, c'est pourquoi je suis retourné sur «Stone». Ce faisant, j'ai dû abandonner «le beau et le damné», pour au moins leur donner l'occasion d'aller de l'avant avec quelqu'un d'autre.

J'ai vécu à New York, et quand j'avais environ 24 ans dans les années 1980, j'ai décidé de sortir d'ici. Je voulais aller vivre en Australie pendant un an ou quelque chose, et cela a fini par être 18 ans.

L'esprit autour de quitter New York, pour moi, était que je sentais que je devais faire quelque chose vraiment en dehors de ma zone de confort. Et je ne pouvais vraiment pas vous dire à l'époque pourquoi j'avais besoin de le faire. Ce n'était pas comme si je fuyais quelque chose de sombre; C'était un désir de faire bouger les choses.

Je ne suis pas le genre de réalisateur qui impose ses processus à tout le monde.

Tracks" est basé sur le livre de Robyn Davidson qui, au milieu des années soixante-dix, a décidé de quitter la ville, de se rendre dans l'outback, d'apprendre à dresser des chameaux et de traverser à pied le désert australien jusqu'à l'océan : un voyage d'environ deux mille miles qui durera six ou sept mois.

Tant qu'il y a de très bons acteurs qui utilisent leur influence pour soutenir les films marginaux, quel que soit le genre, ils seront toujours fabriqués.

J'ai cité «Catch-22» comme film historique et l'un de mes favoris.

Si vous avez un film qui parle de Dieu, vous penseriez que cela plairait aux gens qui se considèrent comme religieux, quelle que soit la dénomination à laquelle ils sont attachés.

La pire chose pour un cinéaste est qu'un film soit étiqueté comme prétentieux ou lourd.

Un film est différent d'un script. Le texte du script est ce qu'il est.

D'après mon expérience, pas seulement dans le tournage de films, mais dans les publicités que j'ai faites, au départ, c'est très excitant pour la communauté, et c'est une vraie nouveauté. Très rapidement, cependant, ils réalisent qu'il y a un mâle à avoir, et cela devient ennuyeux, et ils perdent leur patience assez rapidement.

Je suis en quelque sorte venu d'une grande famille - huit enfants - et je suppose que je suis toujours, plus que la plupart des gens, je me délecte vraiment de l'intimité et de la solitude.

J'aime me considérer comme l'hôte d'une fête et, si tout le monde passe un bon moment, tant mieux.

Il y a quelque chose à propos d'Alan Arkin. Même quand il ne fait rien, il me fait rire. J'ai toujours eu cette réaction à lui: il a une vision du monde fatiguée qui le rend parfaitement jeté.

Je pense personnellement que c'est incroyablement thérapeutique d'être seul dans vos propres pensées et de ne pas paniquer.

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