At the heart of this novel is an enigma. How can a murder take place in a locked room, which shows no sign of being entered?

Besides the crime committed in Paris against the daughter of Professor Stangerson, the novel is also about the rivalry to solve the case between a detective and a young junior reporter on a leading newspaper, Joseph Rouletabille, who reveals in the most dramatic fashion the identity of the real murderer.

The Mystery of the Yellow Room combines the weird, creepy atmosphere of the nineteenth-century thriller, the meticulous logic of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and the techniques of early twentieth-century sensationalist journalism. In the hands of Leroux, the detective novel becomes the fictional equivalent of investigative journalism.