Extra Nate: The Mystery of the Yellow Room Review

It’s Extra Nate! Prepare for spoilers!

Okay I’ll keep this one short. The Mystery of the Yellow Room… not good. Not a fan. Not great. Sorry Dame Agatha Christie but I have to disagree with you on this one. This is absolutely cheating. It’s kind of BS.

The Mystery of the Yellow Room is a locked room mystery. Locked room mysteries are where the person is killed but oh how were they killed if there was no way to get in or out of the room?!? The answer is almost always convoluted Rube Goldberg nonsense. It is almost ALWAYS this way and it is almost ALWAYS really dumb. It’s not for me.

Well I’m happy to report that MotYR does NOT have a Rube Goldberg machine! Hurray! Unfortunately what it has is even stupider. The woman who was attacked? She was attacked earlier in the day, wanted to hide it, then had a nightmare. While having a nightmare she reaches for and wildly fires her gun. Then she flails out of bed and whams her head on the side of the end table. Somehow nobody notices the massive blood evidence on the end-table because fuck you, that would give away the mystery.

The victim (who was NOT murdered) knows who the potential-killer is but won’t say. The victim’s fiance has an idea on who it is but won’t say either. If neither of them say anything, the fiance will go to jail for life and maybe even be hung. So maybe… say something?

Then the detective, a tomato-headed man, just lets the villain go at the end. Yay… I guess. Sure was fun to watch this murderer and woman-beater get off the hook scot free. Good job.

While I’m on the subject of the detective (Routabille I think is how you spell it, no I’m not looking it up) he sure is boring isn’t he? Like everyone in this book is just. So. Boring. I’m used to detective stories being full of interesting characters. Without thinking I could list off the characters of the Agatha Christie novels I read and what all their deals were and all their quirks and their secrets that made them terrible deplorable people. These guys? Uhhh… there was the dad, the fiance, the victim, a guy nobody liked, a woman who was cheating on her husband with the guy nobody liked. There was the narrator. There was tomato man. I can’t tell you their personalities or flaws or anything. They’re big boring slabs of cardboard. Hard pass.

CONTENT AND IDEAS: GRADE 3 (11/20)

Ben says this is an original idea. It’s the first locked room mystery. It’s developed, perhaps, to the detriment of the story. That’s a good point. But I’m not here to judge locked room mysteries. I’m here to judge books. This is Words About Books, not Words About Locked Room Mysteries. You get points for being the original, so congrats to this book. It didn’t get a Grade 2. The rest of the story including the characters and, I would say, the mystery and motivation itself was not developed enough. It’s literally half-baked. The concept got all the attention while the story got screwed.

ORGANIZATION: GRADE 2 (6/20)

The pacing is atrocious. I cannot remember the entire middle of the book. I zoned out for long periods of time and then suddenly oh my God the killer is right there? What happened? Where am I??

It’s so boring. It’s so poorly paced. It is a chore to get through. The length of the book is pretty short and it’s still about a hundred pages too long.

WORD CHOICE: GRADE 3 (11/20)

Nothing special, nothing bad. It’s hard to judge this because it was originally written in the language of people whose best days were 200 years ago. Yeah, I’m bullying the French for no reason. Just no reason at all. I’m sorry.

PERSONAL PREFERENCE: GRADE 2 (6/20)

Let me roll this into the next category too…

RECOMMENDATION STRENGTH: GRADE 2 (6/20)

I don’t like it. I can understand if you’re a locked-room mystery buff you might like this one. Locked room mysteries just aren’t for me. This one even moreso because there aren’t any enjoyable characters to latch onto. At least some of the other ones I read had that to go by. I could remember those books by the strength of the characters alone. As for recommendation strength… no. It’s certainly worth a read if you want to see how the medium has evolved over time. But I’d say this is a niche niche audience. First you have to like mysteries, then you have to like locked room mysteries, then you have to not pick up a better locked-room mystery so you’re more interested in the historical side of things, then you have to want to read a French book. Naw brah.

TOTAL SCORE: 40 out of 100 (an average score is 55 points) this is a 2-star book.