The Secret of the Night

About the book

The young reporter Joseph Rouletabille travels to Russia to help protect General Trebassof, whose life remains under threat despite elaborate precautions. The general's wife Matrena supervises access to the house with fierce determination, but danger seems able to reach him even within its guarded rooms. His daughter Natacha and the household's other relationships complicate any simple division between loyal insiders and hostile outsiders. Leroux combines close examination of physical circumstances with the wider atmosphere of revolutionary conspiracy and state repression. Rouletabille must question not only how an attack could occur but what the people trying to prevent it are concealing. Domestic affection and political violence repeatedly intersect, making the mystery a test of interpretation as well as ingenuity.

• Family secrets
• Political violence
• Reasoning under pressure

Why read it

Read it for Rouletabille's investigation of danger that crosses the boundary between a family home and revolutionary politics.

English translation