The Phantom of the Opera detective mystery entitled "The Mystery of the Yellow Room" in 1907, and four years later he published "Le Fantôme de l’Opéra". The novel was first published within newspapers before finally being published as a novel in 1911. The setting of "The Phantom of the Opera" came from an actual Paris opera house that Leroux had heard the rumors about from the time the opera house was finished. The details about the Palais Garnier, and rumors surrounding it, are closely linked in Leroux's writing. The underground water tank that he wrote about is accurate to this opera house, and it is
The Phantom of the Opera day readers of the book, Sean Fitzpatrick and Cathleen Myers, the novel is praiseworthy for its drama, but overall it does not rise to the standards of great literature. Fitzpatrick claims that ""The Phantom of the Opera" is not a great book, but it is a great read." He digresses that even though the book is not good enough to be in the canon of great literature, there are many aspects of it that make it fun to read such as the drama of the "whodunnit" plot, the investigative styling of the book which pretends to pull from real life