Gaston Leroux published The Mystery of the Yellow Room in 1907, and it's been quietly influencing mystery writers ever since. In this episode we dig into chapters 1 through 6 — the impossible crime at the Château du Glandier, the locked room that shouldn't have an answer, and the arrival of the irrepressible young journalist Joseph Rouletabille, who is eighteen years old and already the smartest person in the room.

This is the book that shaped Agatha Christie, John Dickson Carr, and the entire locked-room mystery tradition. It holds up beautifully, and it's a lot of fun.

Get your copy — ebook and audiobook available now: 📖 Ebook: https://payhip.com/b/lZytv 🎧 Audiobook: https://payhip.com/b/M2HcL

Welcome back to Mark McNease's Fearsome Fiction Podcast, with Night Flight to Murder Town - A Marshall James Thriller, chapters nineteen through twenty-one.

It's 1992, and Marshall James is forty blocks into his first real walk through New York City — down through Chelsea, where hope is spilling out onto the sidewalk in front of every coffee bar. He's thirty-three, starting over, and beginning to believe that might actually be possible.

That belief gets complicated fast. A tour of Muscles Gym leads to a dinner invitation from Leland Jenner that Marshall knows he shouldn't accept — and accepts anyway. Meanwhile, he learns that Trent has his own standing Tuesday arrangement with a certain Senator Daniel Roth.

Then we jump forward. Marshall and his partner Boo arrive in Lambertville to look into the murder of a famous author — last seen alive at the bed and breakfast where they're now unpacking. The canal, the locked rooms, and a housekeeper with perfect comic timing are all waiting for them.

Chapters Nineteen, Twenty, and Twenty-One. Night Flight to Murder Town.

Welcome to Mark McNease's Fearsome Fiction Podcast and another three chapters of Night Flight to Murder Town: A Marshall James Thriller.

Marshall James arrives in New York and gets his first look at Muscles, the gym where he'll be working, courtesy of Trent. He's told the previous manager had to go away and has not been seen since. The new one, Leland, can't quite hide his interest in Marshall. And Trent makes it clear, without raising his voice, that everyone in the room knows exactly where the lines are.

New York is a city that demands a verdict, and Marshall's is immediate. He loves it, against his better judgment. But love doesn't mean safety. Trapped in Trent's luxury apartment with a man whose pager never stops buzzing and whose overseas calls carry the unmistakable sound of crime, Marshall knows he needs to run. He just needs money first, and a map.

Meanwhile, back in the future, Marshall and his husband Boo arrive at a bed and breakfast in Lambertville. Their host Kyle Callahan jokes that their room is the "murder suite" and it's been been good for business. Marshall will soon learn the truth of it, as they explore the river town they just might move to.