The Phantom of the Opera newspaper articles and interviews relating to the Paris Opera House, and the character Erik (the phantom) who fills the roles of the "mad genius", disfigured monster, and one of three in a love triangle all at once. Fitzpatrick argues that all of these elements make the book good for light reading. Myers agrees that the novel makes for a good "airplane read", but says that it fails in terms of being a good mystery novel. She claims that one of the book's downfalls is that one of the important characters - the mysterious Persian - is introduced too late in
Erik (The Phantom of the Opera) strangles the publisher and tries to retrieve his music, only to be disfigured when the publisher's assistant throws etching acid in his face. In the musical horror film "Phantom of the Paradise" (1974), Winslow (the Phantom character) gets his head caught in a record-press, while Robert Englund's horror-version has him selling his soul to Satan and having his face mutilated as a result. This version also has a gruesome variation on the mask, in which Erik is sewing flesh to his face. In Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical adaptation, only half of Erik's face is deformed (thus the famous half-mask often