Gaston Leroux

He spent an inheritance, then learned to live off deadlines. Law first. Then courtrooms, theatre notices, and the 1905 revolution as a correspondent who kept missing his holiday. He quit journalism for fiction and built Joseph Rouletabille — the locked yellow room, the reporter with the bullet-shaped head — plus Chéri-Bibi and a film company to turn the serials into pictures. Le Fantôme de l’Opéra was only a moderate hit. The musical ate his name. The Opera cellars are one address. The detective novels are the factory.