Gaston Leroux, creator of The Phantom of the Opera, reported from a Russia on the brink of revolution before he ever wrote fiction - and pours that eyewitness terror into this Rouletabille mystery. The boy-detective is summoned to St. Petersburg, where someone is slowly poisoning a general inside a locked villa, the household is beyond suspicion, and the secret police are the least trustworthy people in the house. This edition presents the complete and unabridged novel, newly typeset and illustrated with 50 full-page color plates, Kramskoi and Repin among them.